“URBANA, Illinois, July 22, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of a Catholic professor who was barred from teaching after he explained Catholic teaching on homosexuality to the students in a class on Catholicism, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) has defended the decision by saying that the professor was not actually “fired” – he’s just not allowed to teach any more classes.
“UIUC administration has reportedly been deluged with outraged emails and phone calls after news broke that Dr. Kenneth Howell was abruptly disallowed to teach after a student complained about an e-mail in which Howell outlined the arguments for how homosexual behavior is contrary to natural moral law – words the student deemed “hate speech.” The remarks were made in the context of an email to students in a class on Catholicism; Howell had taught classes on Catholicism at the school and its Catholic Newman Center for several years.”
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Yesterday I posted on a graduate student in psychology whose faculty are recommending a Maoist reeducation regimen to teach her sensitivity to homosexuals for suggesting that her Christian faith has a different take on the issue.
Today we hear of a professor who simply taught what the Catholic Church teaches about homosexuality in a course on…Catholicism!! For the crime of being intellectually honest about his subject matter, Dr. Howell is being barred from teaching any more classes. Welcome to the age of tolerance and inclusivity, of mutual respect and diversity.
Liberalism is as fascist as Nazi Germany, and Mao’s China. No dissent is tolerated, and all who dare to speak another point of view are crushed. This is what has become of the greatest university system ever known. I’m fortunate enough to say that I am one of the last who was educated when colleges were great intellectual arenas where people came and were free to state and defend any given position.
When talk began in the 1980’s of bringing tolerance and inclusivity to campus, many of us were confused as it already existed. Then came the speech codes, the sensitivity training, and finally the lists of forbidden ideas. It is into this grinder that we feed our children during the most formative years of their lives. In far too many colleges, education died an ugly death twenty years ago. Now what remains is a grotesque parody of all that once was, husks devoid of their seeds. Now what remains is the bastardization of education: Indoctrination.
All of the intellectual heavy lifting today is being done at the think tanks. Increasingly the universities are being filled with third-rate hacks, idealogues whose ideology can not withstand criticism from nineteen year-old students. How are we do address the ethical issues of the Culture of Death when Christian witness is considered hate speech, when natural law is considered hate speech, when the Bible is considered hate speech?
Having knocked theology, philosophy and anthropology out of the conversation, what is left for grounding one’s argument? The dismissal of thousands of years of religious tradition, the distillation of three hundred years of Enlightenment Philosophy, all in the attempt to squelch opposition is the end of the university system.
In all of this it has become abundantly clear that ethical and moral formation must take place in the home and be substantially in place before our children go off to college. Their faith, likewise must be solid as they go off to school.
A hostile faculty, administration and campus culture await all persons of genuine faith.