Texas A&M University (TAMU) has fired a senior lecturer and two administrators after a Republican lawmaker shared a video of a classroom discussion on gender identity in violation of state law.
The controversy erupted after state Rep. Brian Harrison shared a hidden-camera video online on Sept. 8 showing English lecturer Melissa McCoul dismissing a student who objected to the lesson, which was discussed as part of a children’s literature course.
In one of the undated videos, an unidentified female student is engaged in a discussion with McCoul over content related to gender identity. “This also very much goes against not only myself but a lot of people’s religious beliefs. And so, I am not going to participate in this because it’s not legal and I don’t want to promote something that is against our president’s laws as well as against my religious beliefs,” the student says in the video.
“If you are uncomfortable in this class, you do have the right to leave. What we are doing is not illegal,” McCoul responds.
After the video went viral, TAMU President Mark A. Welsh III initially removed the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the head of the English Department on Sept. 8, citing deviations from the course’s published description.
In a follow-up statement Sept. 9, Welsh announced he had ordered the professor to be fired “effective immediately.” He also said he was previously made aware of the LGBT curriculum.
“This summer, a children’s literature course contained content that did not align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum for the course,” he said. “After this issue was raised, college and department leadership worked with students to offer alternative opportunities for students to complete the course, and made changes to ensure this course content does not continue in future semesters.
Welsh was heard in another video defending the course curriculum, telling the student who complained about McCoul that LGBT-related courses are currently at TAMU and “have been for a long time.”
Following McCoul’s firing, the TAMU Board of Regents announced the board “will not tolerate actions that damage the reputation of our institutions” and confirmed an audit was underway to “ensure full compliance with all applicable laws.”
Free-speech advocates, however, decried the firing as a violation of First Amendment protections, including Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) Director of Campus Rights Advocacy, Lindsie Rank, who called the move “alarming” and argued that Welsh’s justification for firing McCoul was flawed.
In his statement, Welsh justified the firing by asserting that McCoul taught “content that was inconsistent with the published course description,’’ Rank said. “However, the current publicly available description of the course in Texas A&M’s Undergraduate Catalog is ‘Representative writers, genres, texts and movements.’ This is hardly inconsistent with a faculty member conducting a classroom discussion of gender identity in children’s literature.”
In 2023, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 17 into law, which amended the state education code prohibiting public colleges and universities from engaging in specific “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) activities on campus.
President Donald Trump’s January executive order, titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” threatens federal funding for public institutions that promote “gender ideology,” such as allowing access to single-sex spaces based on gender identity. However, the order does not explicitly address university coursework discussing more than two genders.
