Texas A&M University philosopher Martin Peterson resigned after being banned from teaching a Plato Symposium excerpt, a response to a 2025 A&M System Board of Regents policy restricting what faculty can teach on race and gender. Peterson said he could have fought but concluded that no material change was likely, adding that he was asked to revise or remove other course slides later in the term. Peterson’s departure also reflects a wider faculty frustration in Texas, where multiple philosophy instructors have left or declined roles amid similar concerns. Peterson chairs Texas A&M’s Academic Freedom Council and accepted an endowed chair at Southern Methodist University, which he said would protect his teaching from state overreach. The same broader governance landscape is visible in a separate Texas State University dispute: a fired professor, Thomas Alter, was threatened with police involvement after joining a campus protest, prompting Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) to challenge the university’s “time, place, and manner” policy in court. Taken together, the Texas cases illustrate how state-level oversight and campus policy enforcement can collide with faculty autonomy and student protest activities—issues that universities will monitor closely as litigation continues and policies are tested against First Amendment boundaries.