Martin Peterson, a philosopher specializing in technology ethics and normative theory, will leave Texas A&M University for Southern Methodist University in August 2026. At SMU, Peterson will hold the Elizabeth Scurlock University Professor in Human Values title and occupy an endowed chair dedicated to the ethics of artificial intelligence. The appointment places him at the center of one of the fastest-growing subfields in academic philosophy — one that universities, governments, and technology firms are racing to build institutional capacity around.
The move, however, carries a subtext that extends well beyond a routine faculty transfer. Earlier this year, Peterson was reportedly instructed by Texas A&M administrators to remove works by Plato from his philosophy curriculum. That directive, combined with the adoption of new restrictive university policies, precipitated his decision to leave. Peterson is the second philosophy professor to depart the university recently citing concerns over academic freedom, following Linda Radzik's move to Binghamton University.
When Institutions Edit the Canon
The reported instruction to strip Plato from a philosophy syllabus is, on its face, a striking act of administrative overreach. Plato's dialogues are not peripheral reading in the discipline; they are foundational. Asking a philosopher to teach without them is roughly analogous to asking an engineer to work without calculus. The specific rationale behind the directive remains unclear, but the broader pattern at Texas A&M — tightening institutional controls over course content — fits within a wider national trend.
Across American higher education, tensions between faculty governance and administrative authority have intensified in recent years. State legislatures in several jurisdictions have moved to restrict how certain topics — race, gender, history — are taught at public universities. The mechanisms vary: some operate through funding conditions, others through direct curricular mandates. What they share is a willingness to override the traditional prerogative of faculty to determine what belongs in a classroom. When those interventions reach into philosophy — a discipline whose entire method depends on engaging with contested, uncomfortable, and ancient ideas — the friction becomes especially visible.
Peterson's departure, and Radzik's before him, suggests that the cost of such interventions is not merely symbolic. Universities risk losing precisely the scholars whose work attracts external funding, graduate students, and reputational weight. Whether Texas A&M views these departures as acceptable attrition or as a warning signal is an open question.
AI Ethics and the Demand for Philosophical Rigor
Peterson's new role at SMU arrives at a moment when the ethics of artificial intelligence has moved from a niche academic concern to a matter of active regulatory and corporate urgency. Governments across the world are drafting AI governance frameworks. Technology companies are building internal ethics teams — and, in some cases, disbanding them. The field needs scholars capable of working at the intersection of normative theory and technical reality, and Peterson's profile fits that demand.
His most recent book, Ethics in the Gray Area: A Gradualist Theory of Right and Wrong, argues against binary moral frameworks in favor of a more incremental understanding of ethical obligations. The gradualist approach — treating moral questions as matters of degree rather than of kind — maps naturally onto the challenges posed by AI systems, where harm is often probabilistic, agency is distributed, and the line between a tool and an autonomous actor shifts depending on context and design.
SMU's investment in an endowed chair for AI ethics signals an institutional bet that philosophical inquiry into technology will remain central to both academic prestige and practical relevance. It also reflects a competitive dynamic: as public universities face political constraints on what can be taught and studied, private institutions have an opportunity to absorb displaced talent and the intellectual capital that comes with it.
The deeper tension, though, is structural. Academic freedom has always existed in negotiation with institutional authority, but the terms of that negotiation are shifting. The question is not whether universities will shape what their faculty teach — they always have, through hiring, tenure standards, and resource allocation. The question is how direct and how blunt those interventions become, and at what point the scholars who define a department's value decide the environment no longer sustains serious work. Peterson's move to SMU offers one data point. The pattern it belongs to is still forming.
With reporting from Daily Nous.
Source · Daily Nous
