I remember how it was -- JR
Court Rules Professor Can’t Be Forced to Endorse an Ideology Against His Beliefs
Dr. Nicholas Meriwether enjoys a spirited debate. As a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio, there is plenty of that to go around in his classroom. And he is not afraid to voice his disagreement or bring up an entirely different viewpoint.
That’s part of what makes him a great professor. In his class, students are exposed to new ideas and opposing viewpoints. They have the opportunity to grapple with what they believe and why they believe it.
Most people think that’s what universities—the “marketplace of ideas”—are supposed to be.
But not according to Shawnee State officials. Now, the professor finds himself involved in a very different kind of debate—on the opposite side of the courtroom from his university, after it tried to shut down the free exchange of ideas by forcing him to endorse an ideology that he does not believe.
Let’s take a deeper look at his case and the freedoms at stake.
Dr. Meriwether has served as a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University for over 20 years with an unblemished record. He is serious about creating an atmosphere of mutual respect in his classroom.
He is also serious about his beliefs. As a Christian, he strives to live and work consistently with his faith. In fact, his core beliefs are why he’s devoted his career to education.
Many of Dr. Meriwether’s students appreciate how he challenged them in the classroom and brought ideas to the table that were different than their own. As one student wrote:
You and I saw eye-to-eye on very little and that made those arguments all the more valuable to me. If you had only made a half-hearted attempt at a counterpoint or (far worse) neglected to even mention an opposing position in order to spare my feelings, you would have been fundamentally undermining my education. I thank you for showing me enough respect to bring your "A-Game" to every in-class debate.
Unfortunately, not every student felt the same way about encountering differing viewpoints in Dr. Meriwether’s class.
One day, a male student approached Dr. Nicholas Meriwether after class, informed him that he identified as transgender, and demanded that the professor refer to him as a woman, with feminine titles and pronouns. When Dr. Meriwether did not immediately agree, the student became aggressive, physically circling him, getting in his face, using expletives, and even threatening to get him fired.
The student then filed a complaint with the university, which launched a formal investigation.
As a philosopher and as a Christian, Dr. Meriwether believes that God has created human beings as either male or female, and that a person’s sex cannot change. To call a man a woman or vice versa endorses an ideology that conflicts with his beliefs. So, Dr. Meriwether offered a compromise: he would refer to this student by a first or last name only. That way, he would not call the student something the student did not like, but he would also not say anything that contradicts what he believes is real and true.
This compromise was not enough for university officials; they formally charged Dr. Meriwether, claiming he “created a hostile environment” and discriminated against the student. Later, they placed a written warning in his personnel file that threatened “further corrective actions” if he did not refer to students using pronouns that reflect their self-asserted gender identity.
That’s why Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit on Dr. Meriwether’s behalf.
And in April 2022, the professor settled with the university, finalizing his huge victory for free speech. The university agreed (1) that Dr. Meriwether cannot be forced to refer to students using pronouns and titles that are different than the students’ biological sex, (2) to remove the discipline from Dr. Meriwether’s file, and (3) to pay $400,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees.
When the university punished Dr. Meriwether, its message was loud and clear: You must endorse the university’s favored ideology or be punished. There is no room for dissent.
But universities are meant to be a marketplace of ideas, not an assembly line for one type of thought. With its actions, Shawnee State ignored this fundamental truth as well as the Constitution. And the 6th Circuit’s decision sent a strong message to universities: you must respect the First Amendment rights of all professors, and that means you cannot force them to say things they do not believe.
Dr. Meriwether took a stand for his First Amendment rights and secured a victory for every American’s right to speak in accordance with their beliefs.
https://adflegal.org/blog/court-rules-professor-cant-be-forced-endorse-ideology-against-his-beliefs
***************************************************Judge Dismisses Charges Against Parent Opposed to Race-Based Admissions
A federal lawsuit is seeking to get race-based admissions thrown out at the prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. Pictured: Then-President Barack Obama visits the school on Sept. 16, 2011, and watches as then-students Meghan Clark and Nathan Hughes demonstrate a robot created in the school’s prototyping and robotics senior research labs. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
A Virginia parent won a legal victory when a Fairfax County judge dismissed four charges of libel and slander with prejudice Friday.
Harry Jackson, a former PTA president of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology who opposed changes to the school’s admissions policy, was facing libel and slander charges in the wake of claiming that a proponent of the new admissions policies exhibited “grooming behavior” on social media.
The new policies, which critics have characterized as “race-based,” eliminated standardized testing requirements and were found by a federal judge to discriminate against Asian Americans.
“It was a great day for parents maintaining their right to free speech, and if they see something of concern when it comes to child safety, to say something without fear of reprisal,” Jackson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
A lawsuit against Fairfax County Public Schools that includes Jackson as a plaintiff seeks to strike down the new admissions policies as being race-based. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently granted a stay in the case that allows the current admissions policy to remain in place.
Jorge Torrico, a member of the TJ Alumni Action Group, an advocacy group that favored the changes to the admissions process, alleged to the Fairfax County magistrate that Jackson violated Virginia’s criminal libel and slander law by making the “grooming behavior” claims, according to legal documents.
Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano’s office sought to drop prosecution Thursday, but Jackson’s attorney, Marina Medvin, objected and instead filed a motion to have the charges dismissed with prejudice.
“The judge did not reach the constitutional issues of the statute that was used to charge the ‘grooming’ words,” Medvin tweeted.
“This is an important victory for not just Harry Jackson, but also parents and journalists everywhere,” Asra Nomani, a co-founder of Coalition for TJ, told the Daily Caller National Foundation. “A woke activist used a little-used statute to criminalize speech, and prosecutor Steve Descano allowed this harassment to hang over Harry’s head for months.”
“I believe this dismissal, coupled with the publicity from this case, will hopefully restore the public’s trust in the First Amendment,” Medvin told the news foundation. “Nonetheless, my work is not done. My next project is to get this law off the books. Next stop is Richmond.”
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For the Sake of Our Children, Abolish the Department of Education
I don’t know if there’s a more reactionary, superfluous arm of the U.S. government than the Department of Education.
(Well, maybe National Public Radio, whose newsroom called the Hunter Biden story a “waste of time,” but NPR only gets a small government stipend.)
During the Trump administration among his most criticized appointees was Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—probably with justification. But in fairness to DeVos, no one could have done that job well short of turning out the lights and shutting the doors forever.
Education should always be done locally, as far from Washington bureaucrats as humanly possible. This local control should avail itself of charter schools, and school choice (obviously). homeschooling and every other form of education that people—largely parents—can devise for the better education of their children to prepare them and the country for the future.
This doesn’t have to do with money.
One of the great illusions, great lies actually, is that the more you spend on education the better it is. Of course, you need a certain amount, but at a certain point, the reverse is true.
Money becomes an instrument of control with the government withholding it if you don’t go along with their diktats. Further, fancy buildings don’t make a child smart. Never have. Some of the most brilliant people of all time came out of one-room schoolhouses, right, Mrs. Lincoln?
You don’t learn to read and do basic math from gleaming buildings. You learn in small groups, working hard.
These days, few young people can write coherently or even parse a sentence. They don’t even know what parsing a sentence is. It’s rarely taught because considered too difficult by the geniuses with education degrees.
The results of federal control, any federal control, including the egregious Common Core, of our children’s education, have been nothing short of horrendous. The U.S. public educational system, once the envy of the world, is a disgrace, run from above by people who would never think of sending their children to public schools but are certain exactly how we should run them.
This begins in our kindergartens where 5-year-olds are taught the likes of critical race theory (overtly or covertly) or explained the intricacies of transgenderism before they have the faintest idea of how to read or add and subtract.
In classrooms today, teachers no longer teach. They read from pre-planned syllabi as if they were robots. These syllabi, often filled with carefully crafted left-wing gibberish, are intended to make sure our children get a “proper” education but actually do just the opposite: cut off communication between student and teacher.
This also produces teachers who are know-nothings, educated only in “education.” The process is circular and destructive. Teachers spend more time learning how to teach (i.e.. recite by rote what they are told to recite) than they spend actually learning information worth teaching.
Instead of imparting information or actually teaching, that function is left to highly manipulated technology in the form of iPads and the like that are given to students from kindergarten onwards. The outgrowth of that is what I wrote about the other day—5-year-olds putatively taught to read via “The GayBCs,” including N is for nonbinary, T is for trans, and so forth.
And don’t get me started on the teachers’ unions that are a conspiracy to preserve this system and exercise unfair leverage against taxpayers and parents who can only respond to their demands through politicians years after the fact. They also who’ll be abolished.
I say that even though I believe that the greatest people alive are the best teachers, worthy of more respect than anybody, national treasures in essence.
Years ago, when he was running for president, I was a sometime speechwriter for then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry. I liked him a lot and he seemed a possible front-runner until he had that calamity during a debate when he couldn’t remember the federal government departments he would eliminate as president.
The truth was Perry had just had back surgery and was on painkillers. If he only had explained that to the audience, all might well have been forgiven and who knows what would have happened.
Obviously, one of the departments he would have abolished was Education. Maybe Trump or DeSantis will take up this worthy cause.
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Woke mob swarms Lt. Col. Allen West's speech at University of Buffalo
A University at Buffalo student said Monday she feared for life when she was chased by an angry mob last week after inviting black former Texas GOP Chair Lt. Col. Allen West to speak on campus about overcoming racism.
Therese Purcell, who is president of the Young Americans for Freedom at the university, told “Fox & Friends” she was forced to flee into a men’s bathroom after the on-campus event with West spiraled out of control.
Purcell said protestors derailed the Thursday night event — titled America Is Not Racist: Why American Values are Exceptional — during a Q&A segment with West.
She said the protesters — made up of black and white students — started screaming “no peace” and banging on the walls.
“I was really afraid for my life,” Purcell said.
Purcell said West was escorted out by police and protesters started “hunting” her down as she tried to leave. She said that’s when she ran to the bathroom and called 911.
“I don’t think they were going to do anything remotely peaceful. They were a very angry mob, and they were clearly saying that they were trying to chase me, that they wanted to capture me,” Purcell said.
“I’m afraid of what would have happened if I wasn’t able to hide from them.”
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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