Martin Peterson

Martin Peterson is the Texas A&M philosophy professor in Snap judgement: Japan PM’s electoral landslide. The episode says he removed Plato’s Symposium from an undergraduate syllabus after administrators told him to remove the text or be reassigned, because the work discusses gender and sexuality.

Peterson’s role in the source is not only as a faculty member affected by policy. He chairs an academic freedom council on campus and says he has a moral obligation to speak, turning the restriction into a teaching moment by planning classes on the value of free speech.

Connections

• Texas A&M University — institutional setting for the syllabus dispute.
• Academic Freedom — principle Peterson is defending.
• Campus Speech Regulation — policy environment that makes the syllabus change necessary.
• Snap judgement: Japan PM’s electoral landslide — source episode.