After a student at Texas A&M University filmed herself challenging the legality of material in a children’s literature class, the university removed two administrators from their posts and the state’s governor said he wanted the professor in the video gone. By Tuesday night, Texas A&M officials said the professor had been terminated.

University president Mark Welsh said in a statement that the professor’s content for a children’s literature course did not align with the course description, but he didn’t provide further details.

“This isn’t about academic freedom; it’s about academic responsibility,” Welsh said. “Our degree programs and courses go through extensive approval processes, and we must ensure that what we ultimately deliver to students is consistent with what was approved.”

The incident raised concerns about professors’ ability to teach in a state that’s already seen an erosion of academic freedom. It also shows how emboldened state lawmakers are trying to flex their power over universities as students head back to campus. Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison, a Texas A&M alum, circulated the student’s video on X, where it quickly went viral. He then spent most of Tuesday calling for Welsh to be fired, threatening to release more videos, audio clips and documents if he wasn’t.

“You’ll be better off if you fire everyone involved—and the President—now,” he wrote, tagging the university’s X account.

In the initial video that Harrison posted, the student claims that teaching material related to gender identity and transgender people is illegal and violates one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

“I’m not entirely sure this is legal to be teaching, because according to our president, there’s only two genders and he said that he would be freezing agencies’ funding programs that promote gender ideology,” the student told the professor in the video. “And 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.”

Welsh initially defended the professor to the student, according to audio clips posted by Harrison, but by Monday evening he had changed his tune and instructed the provost to remove the dean and department head from their administrative positions, effective immediately, because the two “approved plans to continue teaching course content that was not consistent with the course’s published description,” he said in a statement. At the time, biology professor Mark Zoran was dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and associate professor Emily Johansen was head of the English Department. Neither responded to a request for comment.

In response to Welsh’s statement, Gov. Greg Abbott posted on X, “Good. Now fire the professor who acted contrary to Texas law.” But Harrison shot back, “Not ‘good’ enough. The President must also be fired.”

The episode is a bellwether for how Texas officials might handle violations of the many laws they’ve put in place to limit academic freedom at public universities. At the beginning of the year, a state law enforced a sweeping ban on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at state universities. In June, Abbott signed a bill limiting “expressive activity” and demonstrations on campuses. And as of this fall, the Legislature has abolished independent faculty senates in lieu of board-controlled faculty councils.

Jonathan Friedman, managing director of free expression programs at PEN America, called the removal of the dean and department head an “excessive punishment” in a statement Tuesday.

“We are witnessing the death of academic freedom in Texas, the remaking of universities as tools of authoritarianism that suppress free thought,” he wrote. “Faculty at Texas A&M and across the state have been put on notice: they must not teach about any concepts politicians disfavor, because Big Brother is watching. Such a chilled climate is detrimental to students’ education and the very purpose of an institution of higher learning.”

The Texas Conference of the American Association for University Professors wrote on X that it was “deeply concerned about this unfolding case. Academic freedom, which Texas A&M endorses, refers to instructors’ right to teach in their area of expertise free from government interference.”

Beyond statements from Welsh and the Texas A&M system chancellor, the university hasn’t provided more information about who the professor, the class or how the course content went against the description. Representatives for Texas A&M did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment Tuesday.

It’s unclear exactly what the professor was teaching in the video or what the specific issue was, but a slide displayed at the front of the classroom showed the gender unicorn, an infographic created by the nonprofit Trans Student Educational Resources that explains gender identity and expression, sex assigned at birth, and attraction.

After a brief back-and-forth about the legality of teaching about gender, the professor told the student to take their concerns to the department head or the head of undergraduates and asked the student to leave the class. “I’m not convinced that your proposal will be effective in stopping me from teaching things that are biologically true, because I do have the legal and ethical authority [as well as] the professional expertise in this classroom,” the professor said.

The student also mentioned that they had an in-person meeting scheduled with Welsh for the following day, of which the professor said they were aware. “This is part of why there was an observer in class yesterday,” the professor told the student in the video.

Harrison, the Texas lawmaker who publicized the video, said on X that a student whistleblower provided the evidence to his office. It’s now the crown jewel in his effort to call out professors teaching any material related to transgender people or diversity, equity and inclusion. “While I provided your office with a binder almost a foot thick full of examples of this and DEI occurring in our public universities back in February, nothing has been done to stop it,” Harrison wrote in a letter to Abbott. He called the latest spat at Texas A&M “the most egregious instance I have uncovered.” Harrison did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment.

In addition to the video, Harrison posted three audio clips from a conversation between the unnamed student and Welsh. In one clip, Welsh accuses the student of “trying to pick a fight” and then asks, “Tell me what you’re looking for. What do you expect us to do? Fire her?” The student replies with “yes, absolutely,” to which Welsh responds, “Well, that’s not happening.”

In another clip, Welsh tells the student that “meetings with the professor, the department head, the dean all went pretty well” and that the university was looking to revise the course description to better match its content and potentially label it as a course for LGBTQ literature studies.

Texas A&M system chancellor Glenn Hegar, who assumed the role July 1, said in a statement posted to X that it was “unacceptable” for Texas A&M faculty to push a personal political agenda.

“Early investigations appear to indicate that the professor who taught this course failed to comply with clear instructions to align course descriptions with course materials,” Hegar said. “Further findings reveal that this failure continues to be an issue with this professor. I will work with the Board of Regents to make certain that the A&M System takes the disciplinary action necessary to ensure this does not happen again at one of our campuses.”

The Texas A&M AAUP chapter did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment Tuesday or issue a statement publicly, but did repost a Houston Chronicle article about the incident on its X account.