A professor at an Ohio public college sued his employer after being written up for calling a transgender student “Mr.” in class.
Nicholas Meriwether (photo, left), a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University, claims a First Amendment speech and religious right to call a student self-identifying as female “Mister.”
“I do think that we are losing our academic freedom, we are losing our freedom to disagree,” Meriwether said, according to the U.K.-based tabloid Daily Mail (read story here).
Baloney. This has nothing to do with academic freedom. This wasn’t a classroom discussion about whether a person being trans is a biological condition they were born with, or a behaviorial choice, which easily could be a legitimate topic of academic inquiry or discussion. It’s about whether a bigot has a “right” to inflict his personal biases on a student. There’s a victim in this case.
Freedom of speech, freedom of religious belief, and academic freedom are real rights. But no right, whether created by the Constitution or a faculty code, is limitless. A professor who calls a student “stupid” in a classroom in front of other students should be subject to discipline by the employing college, and probably is. I doubt that even Prof. Meriwether would argue that’s a legally protected exercise of “freedom.”
Academic freedom is meant to protect scholars from repercussions for “acting in an academic capacity” (Wikipedia, here). Name-calling isn’t an academic function. Neither is insulting a student’s gender self-identification. It’s in the same category as the “N word.”
But Meriwether might win in court, because our courts — having been packed with conservatives — appear to be carving out exceptions for bigots who use the Bible to justify obnoxious beliefs and insist their religious liberty is infringed by expecting them to treat other people decently.
In the end, religion itself will be the ultimate loser, because mistreating people in the name of religion will only turn decent people away from religion — a trend already well underway in the United States (read story here).
As for the student in question, if I were her, I would withdraw from Meriwether’s class and demand a tuition refund. Nothing in the law or student code requires her to put up with insults from a stubborn jerk. Nor does anything prevent other students from walking out his class in support of her, should they so choose.
Update (4/18/22): The university settled by paying Meriwether $400,000 and letting him use any personal pronouns he likes (read story here). Why? My guess is their insurance company made them settle, or maybe they worried about what might happen if the Supreme Court got its hands on the case. Why so much? After all, he wasn’t fired, only reprimanded. My guess is he ran up legal bills and most of this will pay his lawyers. What do I think? The student he discriminated against should sue the university to see how much she can get.
Now let’s try a thought experiment. Would a university sued by a professor who called a black student the “n” word pay him a $400,000 settlement and allow him to keep doing that? Would the Supreme Court say there’s a “religious right” to behave that way? If not, why is it okay to discriminate against LGBQT students? And where does it stop? Can college employees discriminate against Jews based on a religious belief that “Jews killed Jesus?” See the problem with this?