Dissenting Compliance and AI Ethics

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All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet dot com slash save right now to get your free quote. That's fetchpet dot com slash save Welcome to the Greay arerea. I'm Vok supervising producer Avishi Artsy, filling in for Sean Illing My guest today is Martin Peterson Martin is a philosophy professor at Texas A and M University Earlier this year, the university asked him to stop teaching work by Plato because it violated a recently adopted policy, limiting discussion of race and gender in the classroom In April, he resigned from his tenured position I asked Martin to come on the show to talk about what happened, Wh should decide what's taught in a university classroom, and why he thinks we should all be reading Plato. He Peterson, welcome the show Thanks for having me You're a philosophy professor. you've been teaching for a couple decades now. In January, you were asked to revise the syllabus For what of your classes? Can you tell me what happened? I teach a course on contemporary moral issues and I ask my students to read Plato Plato symposium and the university decided that We cannot assign that text because it's vogue. It brings up ics related to gender issues and that's not permissible according to university. We have a new policy in place for certain topics that we aren't allowed to talk about at all. And that's one of those issues. So I was told not to teach Plato and I'm in a philosophy department. and that's of course absurd. Everyone understands that in a philosophy department Professors must be I love to teach Plato Can you tell me more about this specific text, Plato syymposium? What does it cover and why did you teach it as part of this class contemporary moral issues? So it's a text about the nature of love to discusses many different forms of love. He is pretty dismiss it dismisses ordinary love between you men and women physical, sexual attraction, et ceter. The highest form of love is love of philosophy more abstract feelings, but he also talks about same sex relationships as being something fully natural and not something that we have to be ashamed of And that was a part that the university had problems with because according to this censorship policy, were'n't allowed to talk about sexual identity syymposium is Seven guys drinking and giving speeches about the nature of love. Socrates, Aristophanes, others Um Can you give us an overview of symposium? What is it that they get into that made you want to include it in your class Right. So I wanted to include in particular Aristopfans speech. which is there part in which I stillpheness repents a theory of different kinds of sexual identities. So he has this idea that at some point in that past. There were three kinds of people mle male. so we kind of attached to each other, a man and a man females, females and male females. And then they split and now they search for their counterpart. So the male, female, right, they search for the opposite sex, and then the male males they search for the same sex and And then Plato discusses relationships between older men and younger men, that was very common in Athens at the time. I find that problematic today J just reading Aistophan' speech and gathered how ancient thinkers thought about certain types of relationships being perfect to normal and even valuableum is revealing, it's perhaps shocking to some people. I'm not deffending Plato or saying that Plato was right, etceter, but just discovering that those ideas and practices have been around a very long time. It's interesting there' ha a discussion about And we don't have to go into interpretations of Plato Ha. Some people are keen to point out that later in his life Plato probably became more conservative and seemed to prefer heterosexual relationships saying that they were somehow better And we can kind of debate the details, but also reading the text and that's what I encourage the listeners to do. G home and read the symposium yourself. You can find it online for free. It's just a pleasure to read the text is the symposium and this selection about Gender and sexuality the kind of thing that students would expect to read in a class like that. Absolutely. So every week we read one classic text or couple of pages from cllassic text. We read Aristotle one week, John Strart Mill another week. so Plato fits very well into that mix of classic text. So in late twenty twenty five, the Texas and M University system Reents adopted a policy that requires approval for courses that address race, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity And after that, those changes were announced, you called them outright censorship. Who are the Texas A andM University system regents As far as you know why did they adopt this policy? Yeah, let's try to explain this from the very beginning. So in September, the university fired a lecturer in the Department of English, Melissa McCool. She was teaching children's literature from a gender perspective. Why are all children's books stories about heterosexual couitals. whyy aren't many children's books with homosexual for example That seems to be a perfectly acceptable way of teaching children's literhip. The goovernor of Texas, Greg Abbott tweeted that she should be fired and then the president fired her And the response to that border regions decided to implement this new policy. And the regents, right the board members, they are appointed by the governor. They are typically successful businessmen, very conservative. It's a political process, of course And they see it as very task to implement the governor's view about how The university should be around Which is problematic. The University is a public university, it's a public good My view is that all students, regardless of their political orientation, should feel The policy does lay out. process in which a professor wanting to teach anything relating to those subjects of race, gender, sexual orientation would need to have the materials reviewed show that they serve a quote, necessary educational purpose It's not clear how that's defined or who would determined it, but then you need to get approval in writing from the campus president to be able to include that course Are those steps that you went through yourself? No, I wasn't eligible for that, but I teach a so called core class and core classes cannot get exceptions from a precedent. So the non courore classes can be submitted for that kind of review. To be honest, most courses we teach in philosophy of that kind are core classes So it wasn't It's by design. They don't want us to teach the topics so they design the pro. so it sounds like we can teach them if we go through the process. But as a matter of fact, it's not there. real option for us to do that. We are not allowed to submit to the courses. You know, this policy is across the board It affects other professors at Texas AM. I was reading some of the policies and it says that undergrads have to fulfill a cultural discourse requirement So I was looking at the list of classes that they offer that meet that requirement related to cultural discourse And the classes are like introduction to race and ethnicity, introduction to women's and gender studies, social and cultural anthropology, human sexuality I don't see how any of those courses could be taught under this new policy Yes, you're here I agree with you. They cannot be taught anymore, and the calital discourse requirement is being revised Things aren't what they used to be anymore. Texas here and M It used to be a university where students could take such courses, but no, not anymore. they're all being cancellled or heavily censored or modified. How are other professors at Texas AM responding. I mean, they can't all resigning? What are they doing? I'm the chair of an accademic Freedom Council, so for me it was natural to speak up and express our concerns. But of course, many, many professors agree with me, but we aren't so keen to speak up because it's risky we've seen that people get fired. But I've talked to lots of colleagues and many, many people This is really bad. It's bad for the university. It's bad for our reputation The value of a degree from Texas A andM will no longer be what it used to be I want to read something that the university said in a statement hereere's what they said Texas and M University will teach numerous dialogues by Plato in a variety of courses this semester and will continue to do so in the future Recently, the head of the Department of Philosophy rejected one section of Philosophy one hundred and eleven. curriculum course because the professors slated to teach the class had included modules on gender and race ideology These were added following the new policy approved by the Board of Regents, specifically prohibiting the teaching of such ideologies My question is like, did you specifically alter your syllabus to include the symposium, After this policy was put in place And if so was it because of this policy So as I mentioned earlier, I used to include the Supreme Court ruling that legalized same six marriage from twenty fifteen. but that's a legal text. So I decided to use the symposium because From a philosophical point of view, Plato makes more or less the same point, sameame sex relationships they are fully normal. there's nothing to worry about. So it's true that I modified the syllabus, right? But I think I did it in an appropriate way And it's also true that O professors teach other texts by Plato. No one has claimed that everything Plato ever wrote has been ban it takes a say in there but one of the most important texts Supposium has been I'm not allowed to teach that text. And that's how censorship works, right? It's pretty rare that everything in all four role is censored. It's typically of the most controversial parts trou liver parts we have to talk about. we ought to talk about that are being censored So of course, it is censorship There's no egg doubt about that And I have to say, I was surprised that they decided to send a plate. That's not what I expected. I was of course aware that could no longer teach the course I've taught it in the past because in the textbook I use Yeah, the textbook doesn't advocate for any particular ideology, but it discusses those ideologies that the university considers to be problematic that you aren't allowed to talk about. And I knew that I wouldn't be allowed to do that. So what I expected to happen was that the department head would tell me to not use that textbook, but perhaps And allow me to teach Plato. Well, I hear what you're saying about Censorship tootally understood To the point of choosing to put this in the syllabus, you have been attacked by some Conservative critics, they've accused you of creating a hoax or academic theater in order to make a point by teaching this in your class purposefully cultivating conflict, Do you buy that or do you think it even matters No, I don't buy it and I don't think it matters. How can it be inappropriate to teach Plato in a philosophy class. I teach Joon Stewart Mill, I teach Aristotle. How could it be a hoax to ask students to read playateo. It's something that hundredundreds of professors around the nation do every single semester. It is true that I used a Supreme Court ruling in the past But that text was arguably more controversial and more ideological than Plato. I think it's more appropriate to teach Plato than to teach its Supreme Court ruling. And it was not a setup in the sense that I did this to provoke a reaction to get to university to respond. planned to contact the press I didn't reach out to the press myself. I forwarded the email I got from a department head saying that I'm not allowed to teach Plato to a colleague at the University of Chicago who published it on his blog and Van journalists from around the world started to call me. So it's not just ital the US, but also Germany, France, England, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Greece, etcetera. You got so much attention for this story. Proably philosophy professors don't get that much media attention Typically Why do you think this U got so many people upset or frustrated. Is it just about academic censorship? Is there something bigger going on? Does this fit into a larger narrative about what's happening in America that you think this kind of touched off a bigger discussion? Some people probably think that There is something problematic about how some universities teach some And perhaps that's true. I'm open to that possibility there But everyone understands that Plato is not dangerous. Plato is not part of a problem, teeaching Plato in a philosophy department can't be something that we should be concerned about. If we end up censoring the classic, someone has been dead for more than two thousand three hundred years that just makes no sense. So people just laughed at it and I guess it confirmed the suspicion that there Far right ideological push has gone too far And that's my explanation here. I should also say that if this had been a setup or hoax, et cetera I think the point would still be valid. I think it wouldn't really matter much for how people perceive it. If I had told you, which is not the case, that I deliberately did this, I wanted to provoke a reaction, and I deliberately picked plate the focus on blah, blah, blah, blah it will still be bad, right? Of course, I should still be allowed to teach Plato in a philosophy department. So tell me about what happens next. So Texas A andM system implements a policy you hear from the phhilosophy department head telling you that You have to remove this from the syllabus What do you replace it with pl Plato with a lecture on free speech and academic freedom The sign of reading was there Arctic Gld Tom New York Times about this incident Th I invited a law professor from D to Austin who came and gave me a guest lecture on the legal aspects of academic freedom and he basically asked the class whereere is the lawsuit And then I gave a lecture myself on Jon Stuart Mill on Liberty, his defense of free speech So in a sense, you could say that the university helped me to create some good content for a class on contemporary moral issues But that was not intentional. It was not a setup. It was not something that I had planned in advance. It was something that just struck me as the best response when I found out my plan had been censored Support for the Gay area comes from Hyns It can be uncomfortable to talk about, but ED is more common than many people realize. And in a lot of cases, it may be easier to address than you'd expect. With HIM, you can connect online with a licensed provider to explore treatment options that fit your needs all from the privacy and convenience of home. If prescribed, HIM says they offer personalized prescription treatment options for ED They provide a range of choices from customized treatments to trusted generic options that can cost up to ninety five percent less than brand name alternatives Everything is handled online, making it easy to access care and treatment plans tailored to your goals HIMS wants to put your health first with licensed medical providers guiding your care and helping determine the treatment approach that's right for you. 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Are they outraged? you know, are they as focused on this or concerned about this as you are or other professors might be? Because I truly believe in academic freedom and free speech, I've really tried to encourage them to defefend the university can I present the strongest possible argument for a view that it is appropriate to censor plateo in a philosoph class In a class f of about two hundred and fifty students I typically have one hundred conservative students or students that tend to say things that can be interpreted as support of conservative viewpoints and roughly one hundred liberals fifty people somewhere between Yeah, you mentioned that you do have conservative students in your classes. I mean, were you hearing any of these frustrations among your students No, I have not received any negative comments. I've received lots of positive comments. I've received emails and thank you notes and even from very conservative students who thanked me for encouraging them to articulate their views. And what I tell my students is that my job is not to tell them what to think. My job is to help them articulate their views And I honestly don't really care what reviews might be as long as we're able to articulate it well. Why do you think that something is right or wrong or problematic or're not problematic? give me an argument and I almost always disagree with whate every they say. My job, I sometimes say is to disagree with students and thereby help them articulate and improve their arguments. Is there any world in which You think it's you know, um, good idea to place any kind of restrictions or limitations A prohibitions okay ever? Do you feel like prorofessors should have pretty much complete control of their courses as long as it's within you know their expertise Within Reason as Chair of Academic Freedom Council I do not think that professors are allowed to say whatever they want in the classroom Of course, it must be relevant to the approved course description if you teach Biology, you can't really talk about plateto all the time because plateo isn't relevant in your biology course You must also be competent. What you say must be based on your scientific expertise. If you teach geography, you cannot claim that the Earth is flat. unless you have very good reasons for making that claim Yeah So no, of course, we should be held accountable for what to say in the classroom But I do believe that we shouldn't censored professors before they' said something controversial. It's better to wait until They have actually said something they should have said and at that point intervene and sanction and if appropriate Do you think it matters that Texas ANM is a public university, a taxpayer funded university I'm wondering if the regions maybe feel that in some way they're implementing the will of the voters of, you know, of the people of Texas by making these decisions of what's permissible what's appropriate in a classroom I think that's a very good question. And I do think that the board has a point that they are accountable to the people of Texas who actually fund the university. That is appropriate. Yeah It's not appropriate for the board to micromanage the course content. What's the point of having an expert in the classroom if expert doesn't get to decide what is said in the classroom I also don't think that it's appropriate to make big politically motivated changes from one year to another that If a non Republican. if a Democrat ever wins a statewide election in Texas again that we subddenly should shift there them dramatically to reflect the priorities of that democratic governor a university needs to be shielded a little bit from political influence at a high level, right? shouldhould we invest in a new law school or should we invest in a new building or some sort? Sure, that is a political decision. It's up to the board to make that decision, but it's not up to the board to control what individual professors say in the classroom. They have to trust your professors. We are the experts. I know what it is appropriate to say in my class. No student has complained about the content, right? I do not advocate for any ideologists. I present arguments for and against all vues that I discuss. You've resigned from Texas AM University. You're leaving at the end of July Can you talk about that decision? Why choose to leave as opposed to just change your syllabus or, you know I believe that I have made my point. I have been interviewed between forty five and fifty times now Everyone knows what I think. I have offered public testimony in front of the board on two occasions. I have written memoss, etceta, etceter But that's not really helping. Vedin has made it pretty clear that his plan is to continue to censor and other texts in philosophy department and in Rby departments So the board is not revising or rescinding the policy. In a sense, you could say that they have won I have received a lot of attention for my views, but it hasn't changed anything So I think I've done what I can. So at some point, SMU in Dalas reached out and asked if I would be interested in position there. And yes, sure, I'm really very much looking forward to joining SMU this fall. It's a private institution, soort a censorship policies and state laws of Texas. do not directly impact what I can say in the classroom. And of course, I'm not going to say anything really controversial. I never did. I never got to the point when I could offering interpretation of Plato in my class. And even if I had gotten to that point, right, I wouldn't have advocated for any ideology anyway SMU, Southern Methodist University. As you say, this is a private college still in Texas Do you expect? to see any of this kind of any of these kind of issues there? My impressionate does SMU is We' a university who still believes in the core values of a successful academic institution Academic freedom is essential for academic success. So that's the biggest difference, right? It's for attitude to higher education that is the significant difference between SMU and AM. But I do believe that all universities in the U.S today face severe challenges, right? anything can happen The US is not doing so well in international comparisons anymore There is a reason for why American universes have been so strong, right? I was born in Sweden. I came to the US to work because I discovered that American universities aren't actually much better than European universities. But if it continues like this That may not be true in the future. One reason for why American universes are so strong is that they attract people from around the world who can come and develop their ideas freely without interference, without censorship Support for the Greay arerea comes from Fetch Pet inssurance. Pets add so much to our lives, really too much to say in words. 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This is a job for indeed sponsored jobs You wrote a book reccently that actually shares a name this show. It's called Ethics in the Greay Area. a gradualist theory of right and wrong. and in it, you're exploring The challenge of making ethical decisions when faced with options that aren't entirely right or wrong options. Do I have that right? Is that of and thank you for asking me about my research. So after more than forty five interviews, someone is actually asking me about my philosophical obvious not just my opinions about academic freedom in Plato. First one, I think most ordinary people, my mother, people on the street, et cetera I find it pretty uncontroversial to say that some things we do are a bit right and a bit wrong right to some degree and wrong to some degree If you tell a white lie in order to achieve a really good outcome, that is perhaps a bit problematic, a bit wrong because it was a lie. But on the other hand, you did help someone do something. so therefore it was a bit right The problem is that Most or almost all mainstream ethical theories cannot articulate that common sense intuition, but there is a gray area in ethics There is no greay area. everyvery action is Iither right or wrong. So it's a big pusle for philosophers. canan we possibly articulate this idea that there is a gray area in Eethics. So that's what my book is about. That's my project to try to make sense of the very commonensical idea that my mother and most people I met Yeah I think is threevatue but philosophers. must be false Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. As you're describing it, it does sound uncontroversial. It does sound common sense Is it controversial among Ephesist to say that there's a greay area in moral decision making? Ethesist, they want to explain away that intuition and say that, well, you think there is a greay area because you don't really know all of the facts. if you were to find out what the consequences of your decision would be then you would see more clearly that one option is right and another option is wrong So imagine, for example, that This is a true story. This happened this morning. My dog was sick. She was in pain. I had to take her to the vet off course, I want to take it to the vet as fast as possible. So should I exceed the speed limit or not? Well I do care about rules. I shouldn't violated speed limit. On the other hand, The dog was really in pain and need to get to bed as soon as possible. that supports the conclusion that I should dririve as fast as I can Is that relf A m of getting more information. As far as I can see, no E if I knew everything about exactly how much pain my dog was in and exactly about what the speed limit is, etceta. That wouldn't really change the situation. It could still be a gray area. It's a bit right and a bit wrong to exceed the speed limit on the highway. So the book Esics in the Greay Area sets up this problem of having to make decisions when your options aren't entirely right or wrong. But then it also lays out a way that somebody you know, like me like you who does have to make these decisions in life all the time, chooses among options that are somewhat right and somewhat wrong How do you pick those options? I defend the controversial view that We should pick randomly. And It is okay to sometimes do different things if you're in exactly the same situation twwice Because we are in a gray area, we shouldn't always maximize degrees or writers. We should't always do what we believe to be right to the highest degree. becausecause if we do that, I can construct three situations in which I have to forego some amount of moral rightness for a great good later on. It gets a bit tick together, It gets a bit complicated Rndomization isn't such a bad thing in my opinion if you are in a genuine greay area. That's the best response it kind of mirrors the messiness, the mushness of the situation you're in. I wonder if you this idea of the moral gray area when dealing with Texas AM and the Platoos symposium dilemm wereere you kind of grappling with different possible outcomes and do you think that the the path you chose was Not just the morally right one, but the one that you would choose every time. That's the best question I've received for several Masks. Thank you. I've actually been thinking actively about how to handle this. I do want to do the right thing, if there is the right option available to me. So I've been careful to not criticize any individuals. For example, I've tried to not criticize my department head, who was the one who sent me the email, censoring Plato. I understand that she is taking orders from the dean. And in fact she said so in the email But still, of course I might be in a gray area because as long as I work at NNM and I'm expected to be loyal to the institution. I was invited to meet the president and the provvost and They were of course upset because this episode led to a lot of negative publicity I said in that meeting that I think I am being loyal to the university by criticizing the university in the long run. Yeah This will actually help the university to become a great academic institution. And I still have positive feelings for EF. But I open admit that Do what I've been doing this semester, critic scienceing a university therefore censoring Plato and basically claiming that AM isn't a real university, at least not at this point in time because we don't have academic freedom I am in a gray area and I'm not sure that I would have done everything in exactly the same day way if I were to do it again. If you were to apply your moral theory here and give advice to other professors who are struggling with issues of censorship and academic freedom Would you tell them to do what you did? Would you tell them to do something different What would you say? I think it depends on the situation you are in. I think the fundamental question, is it okay to censor plate and a philosoph of course, right? That's not a gray area. That's a black or white question. It's definitely wrong to do that. Universes shouldn not be doing that. But if you are a professor and you are censored should you speak up? it can be very risky. You have some obligations to your family and to other people. So if you do it and get fired, you probably did the wrong thing.