AAR has endorsed a letter penned by the American Philosophical Association condemning the academic freedom violations in Texas.
You can read the letter here and see other signatories. The text of the statement is also pasted below.
The American Philosophical Association and the undersigned organizations are deeply concerned about the violations of professional rights and academic freedom that are occurring across the state of Texas since the passing of the Texas Senate Bill 37. That bill diminished faculty autonomy by giving state-level boards—rather than faculty and university administrators—authority over institutional operations and governance, including the content of course syllabi. In a well-functioning university, responsibility for the content of course instruction should rest with subject matter experts in the faculty. Recent moves at Texas universities to prohibit faculty from including particular course units in their syllabi and even cancel courses and programs based on politically motivated concerns about their content, as well as institution-wide pressure on faculty to alter their courses to preempt such interventions, are serious violations of academic freedom. Additionally, a philosophy professor was recently fired from Texas State University for expressing constitutionally protected speech in a context separate from the university, raising further concerns about the professional rights of faculty in Texas.
Limitations on academic freedom strike at the core of the discipline of philosophy. In order to obtain a deep and accurate understanding of the range of human experience—knowledge which is central to a functioning democracy—it is imperative that philosophers, and all faculty, be free to express our views and to teach material related to our areas of expertise. As the APA articulated in a letter regarding SB 37 on May 28, 2025, we consider gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality and religious belief to be among the central areas of philosophical inquiry and education. It is imperative for the health of our society that universities remain places where free and open debate over just such political controversies is allowed to flourish, and for academic decisions about how to teach and research key topics to remain academic decisions, made by faculty on academic grounds and free from external political demands. The APA has reiterated this stance by endorsing the PEN America letter of February 10, 2026, and continues to affirm that faculty and students should be free to engage in open discussion of these topics. Only through the free exchange of ideas can students learn to be critical thinkers and to develop and justify their own views, as is necessary for full participation in a democratic society.