Since 2006, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has been targeting small, private, accredited, and invariably Christian, universities. Its method is to emit vague accusations that codes of conduct of such institutions somehow violate CAUT’s definition of academic freedom. It then appoints its own “commissioners” to “investigate” whether the schools are guilty as charged.
Last year, it used these tactics against Trinity Western University in the Fraser Valley. More recently, it has turned it sights on a Mennonite school in Manitoba, a Baptist academy in the Maritimes and similar Christian schools across Canada.
What’s risible about CAUT’s singling out of these Christian schools is that, by its own admission, it has absolutely no legislative or administrative authority to conduct such investigations.
CAUT has been around since 1951, primarily as a labour advisory body for academic staff. It also plays the role of equal opportunity foghorn on campus free-speech issues. Demonstrating classic mission creep, though, it has appointed itself Canada’s guardian of academic freedom and launched its campaign to root out attempts by universities to “ensure an ideologically or religiously homogeneous staff.”
The meaning of academic freedom is what CAUT says it means. A CAUT document has a footnote to give authority to what it calls the “conventional understanding of academic freedom” — and then cites itself as the authority.
CAUT’s campaign impugns the legal rights of faith-based institutions to require employees to conduct themselves in ways consistent with their affiliation to the organization’s religious mission. Settled human rights law and religious freedom rulings from the Supreme Court of Canada entitle such organizations — non-academic and academic alike — to do just that.
As Don Hutchinson, senior counsel for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, said recently about the case of Heintz versus Christian Horizons: “Christian institutions … have particular rights that permit them to engage in selective hiring, requiring their employees to agree with their mission, beliefs, and behaviours — provided the institution adequately explains … why they are essential to the performance of the individual’s work . . . .” Such rights are not, Hutchinson stressed, special exemptions or loopholes or simply sneaky ways to impose “Christian morality” within the academy. They are legal rights, straight up.
Sending unauthorized “commissioners” to snoop into entirely legal conduct is not just impudent. It offends the very fundamentals of freedom.
This is the kind of danger that needs to be on the map in Christian circles. Is it?
One of those incidents took place at George Mason University (GMU), where Caroline Crocker was ousted from teaching biology because she challenged to neo-Darwinian evolution and favorably mentioned ID in the classroom. Dr. Crocker later appeared in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, but now many more details about Caroline Crocker’s story are revealed in her new autobiographical book, Free to Think: Why Scientific Integrity Matters.
Free to Think tells the story of a biology professor who cares deeply about students, received glowing student reviews, wouldn’t compromise her integrity when challenged to disregard anti-cheating rules, and produced high quality curricular tools. But Crocker had one fatal flaw: she would not capitulate to the Darwinian consensus in the classroom. When some GMU administrators learned that she’d challenged evolution, they told her that she had to be “disciplined” because she taught “creationism.” While GMU now denies that Crocker’s dismissal had anything to do with evolution, her book explains that this is most definitely not what she was told behind closed doors.
But Free to Think is not some sob story. It contains heartwarming and amusing accounts of Crocker’s interaction with students. What struck me were the lengths to which Crocker would go to accommodate and help students facing difficult life circumstances. It is saddening (though not surprising) that she has received many attacks on her character from evolutionists who know neither Crocker nor her story.
[…]At the very time Crocker was told by her Department Head that she would be disciplined for challenging Darwin, she received a performance review from her Provost that called her teaching “outstanding” as “evidenced by unusually high student rankings”! The Provost even praised her, saying, “This kind of teaching quality is essential for this vital educational program, and we’re very grateful for your successful efforts.”
Such statements hardly describe a teacher who would otherwise be expected to soon lose her job. Yet Crocker did subsequently lose her job, and we know exactly why. As Crocker documents in her book, her administrators didn’t want her challenging Darwin.
I like Caroline Crocker a lot. I don’t talk about her as much as I do about Michele Bachmann or Jennifer Roback Morse, but she’s one of my heroes. I was disgusted with George Mason University for doing this to her. I remember Walter Williams saying at some point (maybe when he was guest hosting for Rush Limbaugh) that GMU is a normal liberal university with conservative departments of law and economics. That explains it.
Leftists also have only one sacrament: sex. The orgasm is the source and summit of all bodily pleasure, and to suggest that sexual activity between consenting persons might have a moral content is nothing short of bigotry.
And so it is that a Catholic professor at the University of Illinois has recently had his employment terminated. What for? The university hired him to teach two courses, Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought, during the course of which he had the effrontery to educate his students in the natural law philosophy which informs the Catholic Church’s teaching that homosexual acts are sinful. That’s philosophy, not theology.
Check out the damning email, and one sees that nowhere did this professor, Dr. Kenneth J. Howell, refer to the Christian Scriptures, the writings of the Church Fathers, or the pronouncements of the Catholic magisterium:
“Natural Moral Theory says that if we are to have healthy sexual lives, we must return to a connection between procreation and sex. Why? Because that is what is REAL. It is based on human sexual anatomy and physiology. Human sexuality is inherently unitive and procreative. If we encourage sexual relations that violate this basic meaning, we will end up denying something essential about our humanity, about our feminine and masculine nature.…
“As a final note, a perceptive reader will have noticed that none of what I have said here or in class depends upon religion. Catholics don’t arrive at their moral conclusions based on their religion. They do so based on a thorough understanding of natural reality.”
One student found this offensive:
“I am in no way a gay rights activist, but allowing this hate speech at a public university is entirely unacceptable.… Teaching a student about the tenets of a religion is one thing. Declaring that homosexual acts violate the natural laws of man is another. The courses at this institution should be geared to contribute to the public discourse and promote independent thought; not limit one’s worldview and ostracize people of a certain sexual orientation.”
But Howell refused to leave without a fight, and now he has over 3,100 supporters fighting with him — via a Facebook group called “Save Dr. Ken.”
“It’s turning into a whole movement for freedom of speech in the classroom,” said senior Tim Fox, a member of the group and former resident at the university’s Catholic student Newman Center.
The “Save Dr. Ken” Facebook group includes alumni, current students and outside supporters who are familiar with Howell through his books or his appearances on EWTN, a Catholic television network. Howell is actively involved in the group and has written personal responses to some of his Facebook supporters.
“Save Dr. Ken” is actively working to take its protest beyond Facebook. Its home page offers detailed instructions on how to protest Howell’s dismissal, separately tailored to students, alumni and outside supporters. For example, the group asks alumni to cease donating to the university until Howell is reinstated. It also encourages members to donate to the Alliance Defense Fund, the legal alliance defending Howell’s case.
Members of the Facebook group are planning a prayer vigil on the university’s quad. Students are also organizing a mass boycott of all university religion courses unless Howell is reinstated by the fall, Melissa Silverberg, editor-in-chief of the university’s student newspaper, the Daily Illini, confirmed.
Howell is a popular professor; his students voted for him to receive an “Excellence in Teaching” award last fall, and now they are rallying for him.
Because Howell helped direct programs at the Newman Center, it has become a major player in the conflict. Monsignor Gregory Ketcham, the center’s director, wrote in an e-mail to Newman residents that “We will seek to lobby for [Howell] to continue to teach Catholic courses on campus for University credit and for the Catholic cause on campus.”
Students at the center are not the only ones protesting. The campus secularist group, Atheists, Agnostics & Freethinkers, has taken up Howell’s cause. Howell had worked with the group in the past, helping organize a public debate between an atheist and a Catholic on “Does the Christian God Exist?” last February. Its president wrote a letter to the university chancellor, Robert Easter, saying, “[Howell] has shown a commitment to the questioning of all ideas. His loss is a profound blow to the University of Illinois and its purpose… Who will next be silenced?”
“Even people who disagree with what [Howell] taught think that his firing was wrong,” said Silverberg.
And what the Alliance Defense Fund is doing, from CNS News.
Excerpt:
The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group, has given the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign until the end of Friday to re-instate a professor who was relieved of his teaching duties following complaints he engaged in “hate speech” by teaching students about Catholic teaching on homosexuality in a course about Catholicism.
In a letter to University officials, ADF attorneys say that Dr. Kenneth Howell lost his position simply for teaching the facts about a Catholic moral teaching, and that University officials have until July 16 to respond to demands that the university immediately reinstate Howell to his teaching position, or face court action.
Ah, the Alliance Defense Fund. Proof that you can be a lawyer and still be a good person. If I had children, I would be sure to tell my children that if they wanted to work for the ADF, all their law school expenses would be paid in full. That is, assuming I had income left over from paying for abortions, IVF and sex changes for Obama’s special interest groups. Oh, well. Let’s hope that someone repeals Obamacare before my future children are ready to go to university.
WINTERY KNIGHT 