Category: freedom of religion

FFRF rebukes NYC mayor Mamdani for mixing city business with Islam

March 18, 2026 • 10:15 am

Since I was in an upsetting kerfuffle with the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF, and I call the squabble “The KerFFRFle”), over which I resigned from its Honorary Board along with Steve Pinker and Richard Dawkins, I haven’t paid much attention to the organization. I do get their alerts, for they’re still doing good work in upholding the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, reinforcing the wall between church and state. Their condemnations, like the one I highlight here, don’t usually accomplish much, but their lawsuits or amicus briefs have been effective, and the FFRF does raise awareness about Constitutional violations.  Yes, they are overly woke, which is why I resigned (see the first link), but that doesn’t mean that their overall effect is bad. It isn’t!

I noticed the other day that they’ve gone after New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who I see as both an antisemite and an Islamist. And by “Islamist” I mean a Muslim who is active in trying to make countries adopt Islam as part of their system of governance.  In this case, Mamdani is mixing Islamic religious celebrations with city business: a violation of the First Amendment. I have little doubt that he would like the U.S. to become the Islamic Republic of America.

Click the screenshot below to read:

An excerpt:

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is again warning New York City’s mayor that the Constitution prohibits government officials from using the machinery of public office.

FFRF has sent its second letter in a couple of months to Mayor Zohran Mamdani after receiving a complaint from a New York City employee regarding a recent religious event organized through official city channels. The national state/church watchdog previously contacted Mamdani in February after he posted on the official New York City Mayor’s X account about participating in a suhoor meal and praying with Department of Sanitation workers during Ramadan. [JAC: he appears to have deleted the tweet, and if that’s the FFRF’s doing, good for them],

Despite that warning, FFRF has now learned that the mayor’s office held a “City Workers Iftar” on March 12 to “celebrate workers who keep New York City running while fasting.” The event notice was emailed to city employees by Interim Commissioner Melissa Hester and it noted that the event included a call to prayer.

A city employee who contacted FFRF observed that it is “completely inappropriate for a government agency to have a religious celebration.” The employee expressed concern that events like this may create the perception that the mayor’s office favors one religion and that employees attending city-sponsored events may be expected to participate in religious activities.

“While you are entitled to observe your faith in your personal capacity, the Constitution prohibits government officials from organizing, promoting or participating in religious exercises in their official roles,” FFRF Legal Counsel Chris Line writes to Mamdani. “Hosting a religious observance for city employees of one religion and facilitating a call to prayer through official government communications and personnel crosses the line between private religious expression and government-sponsored religious worship.”

FFRF emphasizes that city employees work under the authority of elected leadership, creating a dynamic where even “voluntary” religious events can carry implicit pressure. “Public employees should not be placed in a position where they may feel compelled to attend a religious event or appear supportive of a particular faith tradition to maintain favor with their employer,” the letter states.

I oppose Mamdani not only because of his Islamism and apparent antisemitism, but because he’s a faux Democrat, promising much but likely to deliver little. (See his latest gaffe on St. Patrick’s day!) And I worry that because the Democrats are so befuddled and besotted by “oppressor/victim” ideology (Mamdani, being a Muslim, is seen as “oppressed”), he will have a future in politics beyond being mayor. He could become a Congressman, though fortunately not President, as he wasn’t born in the U.S.

Anyway, be aware of what’s going on in NYC, and kudos to the FFRF.

The Humanist Society of Australia withdraws support from Steve Pinker’s book tour

September 30, 2025 • 8:45 am

The repercussions of my kerFFRFle with the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) continue, long after I thought the fracas had died down. You may recall the details, which are summarized in a post on this site. In short, the FFRF published a blog post by one of its interns, Kat Grant, called “What is a woman?” (The post is still up.)  Its aim was to define who is a “woman”, a definition that seems to have become very difficult for some people. (Three words will suffice: “Adult human female.”) But Grant’s article ends with the sentence, “A woman is whoever she says she is.”  That defines the term using self-identification alone, so that anyone, including a biological male, can be a “woman” if he so claims.

As a biologist and member of the FFRF Honorary Board, I asked the FFRF if I could write a brief rebuttal to this claim, a claim that flies in the face of the biological definition of a woman: an adult human being with the reproductive equipment evolved to make large gametes (i.e., eggs).

I was given permission to publish the piece, which I called “Biology is not bigotry”, an archived version of which you can see here or here. It dealt largely with the biological definition of sex and emphasized, as the title notes, that being transgender should not lead to the loss of one’s rights or dignity—save in the small subset of cases in which transgender rights conflict with the rights of others, as in sports participation or whether a convicted person is sent to a men’s or women’s prisons. (I also noted that by taking on this issue, the FFRF was engaging in mission creep, abandoning its goal of keeping church and state separate and educating the public on the First Amendment.)

My letter—again, published with the FFRF’s permission and vetting—was posted on the FFRF’s blog as a response to Grant’s piece—for about a day. Facing opposition from some of its staff, the FFRF then took my letter down without notifying me or even answering my inquiries about its disappearance.  At that point I had no choice but to resign from the FFRF’s Honorary Board.  At the same time, but independently, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, also members of the Honorary Board, also resigned. In response, and for reasons that aren’t clear, the FFRF dissolved the entire Honorary Board, though, curiously, the Board still appears on the FFRF’s site.

Well, that was pretty much the end of it, though my letter led to defamatory and misguided slurs that I am a “transphobe”, which occasionally leads to my getting unpleasant emails or website comments. Trans issues, it seems, are immune to rational discussion unless you buy the entire gender-activist program promoted by “progressives.”

I haven’t quite figured out why this one issue raises such rancor, leading to the demonization of those who try to rationally contest “progressive” gender activism. J. K. Rowling and Kathleen Stock (OBE), for example, have been consigned to perdition—and Stock forced to resign her job at the University of Sussex—after being demonized for their “gender-critical feminism” and views that male self-identification as women is inimical to society as it can infringe on the rights of biological women.

The slur of “transphobia” attached to critics is one lesson from this sad story, but there’s now a second one: your damnation will follow you for life, no matter how hard you try to clarify your views on the issue. And that is instantiated by what just happened to Steve Pinker.

Yesterday I got an email from Desh Amila, a producer, educator, and entrepreneur, one of whose activities is arranging public appearances of famous humanists or nonbelievers.  As such, he was setting up Steve Pinker’s tour in Australia to promote his recent book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows. . . : Common knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. Here is part of Amila’s email, which I reproduce with permission:

. . . . .My name is Desh Amila. We have exchanged emails in the past regarding Richard Dawkins and Coleman Hughes. I am also the organiser for our mutual colleague Steven Pinker’s upcoming speaking tour in Australia. I’m writing to you today because one of your articles has found itself at the centre of a disappointing, though telling, controversy.

We recently had the Humanist Society of Australia officially withdraw its partnership and support for the tour. After several days of internal debate, their CEO informed us that they were unable to reach “consensus” on how to handle Professor Pinker’s public support for your article, “Biology is not Bigotry.”

The issue was initially raised by their “Rainbow Atheists” community, and it appears the organisation ultimately chose to withdraw rather than stand by the principles of open inquiry and free discussion.

It strikes me as a powerful, real-world case study of the ideological capture and institutional retreat from science that you so frequently and eloquently document on your website. The irony of a Humanist organisation being unable to even support a tour associated with a rational discussion of biology is profound.

I have already briefed Steve on the matter. I wanted to ensure you were aware of it as well, given your article was the explicit catalyst. Of course, you are welcome to share or write about this story if you see fit; it seems a particularly well-documented example of the chill spreading through these organisations.

Desh is right: this is a huge irony.  The Humanist Society of Australia is of course free to support or not support anyone they want, but I can’t think of a more prominent humanist than Pinker, and of course he is NOT a transphobe. His resignation from the FFRF’s Honorary Board was prompted by free-speech and mission creep issues, not by some attempt to “erase” trans people. The Humanists Society of Australia should be ashamed of itself for damning Pinker in this way.  Apparently some members will brook no opposition to their views, and thus start engaging in “cancel culture.”  I repeat: I know Steve Pinker well, and he is NOT a transphobe.  Nor is he a Nazi, a fascist, or—as I was called the other day)—a “goose-stepper.” Historically he has been one of Harvard’s biggest donors to the Democratic Party.

I have seen the Humanist Society’s original letter, which, as Desh reported, says that it can’t support Steve’s book tour because the organization couldn’t reach a consensus about how to regard Steve’s support for my piece on “Biology is Not Bigotry”. In the absence of a consensus, they withdrew their support (I think that means money) for Steve’s tour. (I am characterizing the letter as I haven’t asked for permission to reproduce it.) Because of this one action, Pinker is doomed to suffer eternally, at least in Australia.

This is one example of the quasi-religious nature of gender ideology that I described in a WSJ op-ed.  As I wrote in that piece, transgender ideology

. . . makes anathema of heresy and blasphemy (tarring of dissenters as “transphobes”), attempts to silence critics who raise valid counter arguments, seeks to proselytize children in schools and excommunicates critics (J.K. Rowling is the best-known example). Like religious fundamentalists, proponents of these views have a fierce conviction that they’re morally correct and know what’s best for you and society. To disagree is to be immoral—sinful, you might say.

A later email to Desh from the Humanist Society of Australia added that the reservations about Pinker’s support for my letter were particularly raised by the  Australian “Rainbow Atheist” community, citing a link to what was apparently a rebuttal to my now-vanished FFRF piece, a link that now goes nowhere!

The good news is that Steve’s Australian tour will go on, as there is still ample support for it.

The bad news is the Humanist Society of Australia has gone the way of other humanist/atheist/secular societies, including the FFRF. In fact, the “progressive” ideological capture of these societies seems to have no exception—save for the Center for Inquiry, which has admirably resisted a mindless adoption of the ideological Zeitgeist.

The desire to show one’s virtue by publicly flaunting the au courant ideology of the far Left seems to have few exceptions, even among Leftists. Those on my own side of the political spectrum—also the Left—are too intimidated to speak up against ideological capture of societies like the Australian Humanists.

Should academia practice “political DEI” and hire more conservatives?

June 3, 2025 • 9:30 am

The Atlantic article below, by staff writer Rose Horowitch, points out a fact the whole world knows: academia in America comprises nearly exclusively faculty of a liberal persuasion. Conservative professors are as rare as hen’s teeth. This has led to a dearth of political argumentation pitting Left versus Right, since the Right is hard to be found. It’s also led, as Horowitch says, to a decline in respect for academia. But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Click the headline below to read, or find the article archived here.

First, the data:

Between 30 and 40 percent of Americans identify as conservative, but conservatives make up only one of every 10 professors in academia, and even fewer in the humanities and most social-science departments. (At least they did in 2014, when the most recent comprehensive study was done. The number today is probably even lower.) Of the money donated by Yale faculty to political candidates in 2023, for example, 98 percent went to Democrats.

This is a relatively new degree of such imbalance:

Academia has leaned left for as long as anyone can remember. But for most of the 20th century, conservative faculty were a robust presence throughout the humanities and social sciences. (In 1969, for example, even as anti-war protests raged across campuses, a quarter of the professoriate identified as at least “moderately” conservative.) But their ranks have thinned since the 1990s. At the same time, moderate and independent professors have been replaced by people who explicitly identify as liberal or progressive.

Here’s the claimed inimical effect of this imbalance on the reputation of colleges and universities:

Conservative underrepresentation has also hurt higher education’s standing with the country at large. Polls show that Americans, particularly on the right, are losing trust in universities. A Gallup survey taken last year, for example, found that Republican confidence in higher education had dropped from 56 to 20 percent over the course of a decade. Respondents attributed this in part to perceived liberal bias in the academy.

Why the dearth of conservatives? Horowitch adduces data that some of it may be due to a lack of good candidates, but there also seems to be a bias against hiring conservatives:

Opinions differ on the precise extent to which conservatives are being excluded from academia versus self-selecting into nonacademic careers. But they clearly face barriers that liberal and leftist scholars don’t. Professors decide who joins their ranks and what research gets published in flagship journals. And several studies show that academics are willing to discriminate against applicants with different political views. One 2021 survey found that more than 40 percent of American (and Canadian) academics said they would not hire a Donald Trump supporter. Then there’s the fact that entire disciplines have publicly committed themselves to progressive values. “It is a standard of responsible professional conduct for anthropologists to continue their research, scholarship, and practice in service of dismantling institutions of colonization and helping to redress histories of oppression and exploitation,” the American Anthropological Association declared in 2020.

“Professors will tell you straight up that people who hold the wrong views don’t belong in universities,” Musa al-Gharbi, a sociology professor at Stony Brook University who studies progressive social-justice discourse, told me. “That’s the difference between viewpoint discrimination and other forms of discrimination.”

If this is the case, then the dearth of conservatives is not due solely to a lack of meritorious conservative candidates, but is in part due to bias.  And that has caused several universities, including ours, to try to bring in conservative speakers,= and to develop new programs that allow right-wing voices to be heard:

Some university leaders worry that this degree of ideological homogeneity is harmful both academically (students and faculty would benefit from being exposed to a wider range of ideas) and in terms of higher education’s long-term prospects (being hated by half the country is not sustainable). Accordingly, Johns Hopkins recently unveiled a partnership with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a center-right think tank, designed to inject some ideological diversity into the university. Steven Teles, a political scientist who wrote a widely discussed article last year for The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Why Are There So Few Conservative Professors?,” is one of the faculty members involved with the partnership. The institutions will collaborate on a number of efforts to integrate conservative and heterodox thinkers.

So we have an odd situation in which both sides are behaving counter to their reputations. Conservatives, who have generally opposed affirmative action, now favor it—for professors with conservative viewpoints.  In contrast, the progressive Left, which is often opposed to turning academia into a meritocracy, now wants a meritocracy because conservatives are often seen as lacking academic merit.

But there are other issues to consider.  The First Amendment, for example, bans the government from restricting speech based on its content. This would seem to prevent universities—at least state universities—from restricting the hiring professors of merit just because they espouse conservative views. (Note the admissions of anti-conservative bias above.)  Further, universities are generally forbidden to hire professors based on race, creed, degree of disability, and so on.  The University of Chicago’s 1973 Shils report, for example, notes this (my emphasis):

There must be no consideration of sex, ethnic or national characteristics, or political or religious beliefs or affiliations in any decision regarding appointment, promotion, or reappointment at any level of the academic staff.

And there’s an elaboration of this at the report’s end, which includes this:

In discussions and decisions regarding appointments, promotions, and reappointments, appointive bodies should concentrate their consideration of any candidate on his qualifications as a research worker, teacher, and member of the academic community. The candidate’s past or current conduct should be considered only insofar as it conveys information relative to the assessment of his excellence as an investigator, the quality of the publications which he lays before the academic community, the fruitfulness of his teaching and the steadfastness of his adherence to the highest standards of intellectual performance, professional probity, and the humanity and mutual tolerance which must prevail among scholars.

This would seem to ban even considering political beliefs and stances as a criterion for hiring (or promotion).  In Chicago, at least, we cannot redress the imbalance between Right and Left among faculty by preferentially hiring on the Right.  That also amounts to discrimination of hiring Left-wing faculty, itself a violation of Shils.

Nevertheless, a faculty almost entirely comprising liberals is a faculty not conducive to meeting an important mission of the university: promoting fruitful discussion between those having opposing views on issues. It’s not like all conservatives are lunatics: there are many, some of them here, who are eloquent and make arguments worthy of consideration.  Further, even if you are on the Left, you should agree with John Stuart Mill’s claim that you cannot defend your own viewpoint very well if you don’t know the best arguments of the other side.

But if that side is missing, what do we do?

I have no solution here, at least not one that doesn’t violate the Shils report.  One solution is what the newly-established Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression (a free-speech discussion site) is doing: bringing in speakers of divergent views and creating new fora, all designed to promote discussions and debates.

But is that an adequate substitute for having faculty members on different sides of an issue? Conservatism, after all, is not like creationism. Creationism is a debunked set of scientific claims and need not be debated on campus (though I wouldn’t oppose such debates). In contrast, conservatism is a widely represented set of political views, many of which can be rationally defended.

So, my question to readers (actually two questions):

Do we need more conservative faculty members in American colleges and universities?

If so, how do you propose to do it without violating the law or academic freedom?

Another government-funded organization encourages staff to chant Māori prayers

July 19, 2024 • 9:30 am

Some of you may be wondering why I persistently post on the efforts of New Zealand to interpolate local superstitions and lore into science classes and other government endeavors.  This is not because I hate New Zealand, but because I love it.  I hate to see the country brought down, especially scientifically, by sacralizing the superstitions of the indigenous population. Yes, I admit that the local “way of knowing,” Mātauranga Māori (MM), does contain some empirical trial-and-error knowledge, though most of that knowledge should be conveyed in anthropology and sociology classes. But what’s going on in the country now is the world’s most pervasive form of “wokeness,” though it’s not purely performative because it actually damages the country. And the authorities have ensured that no objection to this ideological capture will be tolerated.

So my occasional reports about New Zealand on this site are meant to let Kiwis know what’s really going on in their country in the hopes that rationality and science won’t be held hostage to the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. Many residents know already, but many also send me documents that can’t be criticized publicly because the sacralization of the oppressed has reached the point where New Zealanders who criticize the intrusion of legend, superstition, and local religion into the workplace are liable to be fired or punished.  I can’t tell you the number of emails I get from Kiwis urging me on, but saying that I can’t publish their names for fear of reprisal.  But since I’m in the U.S., I can at least mention this foolishness without fear of retribution. That’s why some NZ outlets, like this one, simply reproduce the posts I’ve written about what seems to be the world’s worst and most dictatorial form of DEI.

So here is yet another email from a New Zealander wanting me to report on this mishigass, but asking to remain anonymous.  So be it.  The other day I reported how the staff at some locations of Health New Zealand, a government health-promoting agency, were encouraged to say Māori prayers or chants (“karakia“) daily. This practice was originally reported on a NZ website, but the link was sent to me anonymously. The author, A. E. Thompson, noted that “voluntary” prayers aren’t really that voluntary if you’re pressured to say them:

Sure, the email to health staff only used the word “encourage” but really, when your employer issues an email saying that, you know it will be expected and that ignoring or opposing it will be held against you and may cost you your job.

Pressuring state employees and even private company employees to participate in karakia sets a dangerous precedent in eroding separation between state and religion. As we speak, Muslim immigrants in Europe are deliberately imposing their religious practices on non-Muslim populations by having their distorting loudspeakers call dozens or hundreds of faithful to prostrate themselves in prayer on public footpaths and roadways (even though nearby mosques are plentiful). The practice reflects their belief that Islam is so important that everyone either needs to convert to it or be discriminated against or killed.

This is why, in the U.S., “voluntary” prayers are banned in school. This not only violates the First Amendment, but pressures kids to conform to public prayers lest they be ostracized.

Well, now New Zealand has done it again, this time in a hospice largely funded by the government, and in the southern part of the country. The hospice even suggests some prayers, which seem to be Māori.  This was sent to me by someone who requests anonymity for fear of losing their job.

Note that this was sent to the staff of a hospice, not to the residents, and, as usual, it’s full of Māori words (I’ve bolded them) that are there simply as a performative act, since they impede understanding (everyone speaks English, but few, even Māori people, speak the indigenous language). In this case, most have already been translated into English. You can look the words and pharses up in the Maori dictionary, but karakia I’ll define for you (here’s part of it):

incantation, ritual chant, chant, intoned incantation, charm, spell – a set form of words to state or make effective a ritual activity. Karakia are recited rapidly using traditional language, symbols and structures.

It can also refer to Christian prayers, but note in the second paragraph that this effort is being guided by a Māori advisory group. Note as well that the introduction of the karakia are being timed to coincide with the new Moon (the phases of the moon have great significance for Māori life).

The email:

Kia ora team,

I’m emailing you all ahead of a change in the way we manage karakia for our IDT hui/meetings.

I want to acknowledge that karakia to begin and end our IDT hui/meetings started quite abruptly to begin with, and it is my hope, and that of the Māori Advisory Group (MAG), to provide some context and to guide this part of our day in a way that is supportive and makes sense.

Firstly I’ll speak to why work places might look to introduce karakia into everyday activities, such as the IDT meeting. Karakia are an integral part of te ao Māori (the Māori world).

On a functional level karakia:

– Provide a predictable structure to everyday interactions i.e. beginning, middle, end;

– Enable the everyday exchange of whanaungatanga (managing relationships/relationship building) and manaakitanga (hospitality).

– Support the normalisation of te reo me ngā tikanga Māori (Māori language and customs), which I believe in turn lends to:

— The development of skills that enhance our capacity to provide culturally safe care to Aotearoa New Zealand’s indigenous people.

— The development of perspectives that foster cultural humility in our engagements with all.

On a deeper level karakia:

– Support us to collectively connect with and focus in on the context (kaupapa) of the interaction;

– Navigate tapu and noa (separate but corresponding states of being within te ao Māori. Inappropriate association between things that are tapu and noa can impact all dimensions of wellbeing) safely.

– Fortify our holistic wellbeing by engaging with Te Taha Wairua (the spiritual dimension of wellbeing).

Making space for karakia within our workplace is particularly important given the intensity of the mahi (work) we are engaged with as individual clinicians, and as a collective. Our mahi straddles the ordinary and the extraordinary: we support patients, whānau and caregivers as they navigate the threshold between life and death, and support each other to provide this care.

We are going to begin refreshing the IDT karakia (or whakataukī – proverb) in concordance with Whio – the New Moon – as an opportunity to consider and acknowledge both the maramataka (Māori lunar calendar) and pūrākau (stories/legends/myths) inherently relevant to our work at the hospice.

 Our hope is that incorporating such an initiative into OCH processes will support us to:

·        Normalise the use of te reo Māori.

·        Enable the everyday exchange of whanaungatanga and manaakitanga.

·        Grow in our personal and organisational understanding of Māori world views within the palliative context.

·        Equip the team with knowledge that may support us to be more culturally responsive.

·        Foster a sense of interest/curiosity in learning more.

So, with this in mind, and given that the next new moon is July 6th, we will be setting this new initiative in motion on the next working day which is Monday 8th July. On the 8th I’ll speak to the initiative briefly, and then provide some context regarding the new karakia or whakataukī, and we’ll go from there. For those that feel comfortable joining in with reciting the karakia – please feel free to join in – otherwise, please feel free to sit back, relax and tune in to the kupu (words) and the kaupapa of the karakia, kei a koutou (its up to you)!

You will find copies of the karakia or whakataukī we are going to use for the next month attached to this email for your reference.

If you are curious about learning more please check out the piece I have contributed to this months OCHeye coming out soon!

The two karakia enclosed are both Māiru incantations: here’s a screenshot of one:

 

Yes, these are non-religious and could be considered as Māori haiku, but the point is that these are “suggested” incantations, and they are Māori.  Note that these are being introduced to the hospice to bring it into “the Māori world”, and one of the stated reasons for the introduction is “The development of skills that enhance our capacity to provide culturally safe care to Aotearoa New Zealand’s indigenous people” and to ·       “Grow in our personal and organisational understanding of Māori world views within the palliative context.”  Now of course one must be sensitive to the culture of hospice patients, and not insult or agitate them, but prayers aren’t the way—they should use Måori healers or spiritual leaders to do this—and I doubt that everybody in the hospice is of indigenous ancestry.

This is in fact one attempt to indoctrinate the staff with the spiritual aspects of Māori culture. Yes, the prayers are “optional”, but you know what that means, and woe to the person who writes to the boss to object to this effort! What is this doing in a hospice? Are there any atheists or Christians there? In the U.S., this kind of effort would be prohibited as discriminatory and perhaps a violation of the First Amendment. Chaplains are allowed to visit hospitals and say prayers with the patients, but hospital staff are not given “suggestions” to say prayers. But this admixture of superstition and government-funded institutions is not prohibited in New Zealand. Many residents object to it, but they’re so cowed that they can’t even voice their objections for fear of punishment. All over the country, speech has been chilled.

So it goes. I hate to think of what New Zealand will look like in thirty years, when this kind of ideological capture has become the norm.

******

I’ll add that in 2021 the leadership of the University of Auckland, Vice Chancellor Dawn Freshwater, promised that there would be seminars, panels and debates on the virtues of teaching MM as coequal to modern science in university science classes.  That was three years ago, and absolutely nothing has transpired. I’m told that the Māori moiety of the administration has prevented any such debate, but I don’t know for sure. All I know is that when I wrote Dr. Freshwater reminding her of her promises, and asking when this important debate would take place, I got no reply.

Mission creep at the FFRF

December 17, 2023 • 12:30 pm

One of my favorite secular organizations is the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), of which I’m a member of the “honorary board”.  But even honorary boards should play an advisory role, and so I’m doing that here by calling attention to the organization’s mission creep.

In previous posts, I noted that the organization, which is dedicated to keeping church and state separate—a most laudatory goal—had branched out into areas that didn’t really aim at that goal. For example, they’ve gotten involved in legislation that promotes the participation of trans women in women’s sports, which is not only not a church/state issue, but is unfair and, I think, harmful to women’s rights. The FFRF also branched out into disability rights. That’s a cause I do support, but is not in the stated ambit of the FFRF. At the time I posted about this, I wrote:

This time, the FFRF is making a push for disability rights. While I’m in favor of disability rights, I don’t see them as connected in any way with the separation of church and state. This latest move, on top of the unwise support for transsexual girls participating in public school sports (especially when they’re post pubescent), shows that the organization is expanding into the realm of social justice, just as the ACLU and SPLC has. In general, I see such an expansion as unwise, especially when it involves misguided stands like those about transgender women athletes.

This, too, isn’t a church/state issue, but in both cases above the FFRF has tried to justify entering these areas by saying that they’re forms of “Christian nationalism.” That is, Christian nationalists may oppose trans activism more than do “regular” Americans, and may also be more often against disability rights, though that connection seems more nebulous. Here’s what the FFRF said about that:

Disability rights are a state/church issue.

While America’s conscience has not consistently recognized this, there are clear ties between the Christian nationalist ideology that pervades legislation and the ongoing reality of stagnant and inadequate disability rights laws. The dangerous theocratic Christian ideology that led to Roe v. Wade being overturned is the same ideology that continues to play a part in the oppression of the 61 million disabled adults across the United States. This ideology has guided both harmful disability rights policy and the dismantling of abortion rights. To put it simply, if you care about disability rights, then you also care about the separation of state and church

That didn’t convince me that much.  Several of us wrote to the FFRF about this expanding mission, but the organization simply stuck to its guns that these are church/state issues.

Now the FFRF has expanded its mission again—this time promoting voting rights and some legal attempts to make it hard for minorities to vote, even if they’re citizens. That, too, is a form of activism I favor, but, like the cases above, the FFRF justifies this activism as opposing Christian nationalism. In the latest issue of their paper, Freethought Today (click on the headline), there’s an article by Sammi Lawrence, “FFRF’s Anne Nicol Gaylor Legal Fellow,” justifying a push for voting rights on the grounds that opposing those rights is one goal of Christian nationalism. Click the headline to read.

Again, I favor opposing attempts to restrict voting, but that is simply not a church state issue. Here’s how Ms. Lawrence justifies it:

A vibrant, fully franchised electorate is the best guarantee to protect our secular Constitution and government. Without a functioning democracy, the wall of separation between state and church cannot be protected or rebuilt. A diverse and fully enfranchised electorate ensures that no single religion, sect or group can take charge of government and privilege itself or discriminate against others. Protecting voting rights, and thus our democracy, is therefore a state/church issue that should concern all secular Americans

. . . . A three-judge panel in Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment has ruled that private parties, including membership organizations, cannot sue to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Judge David Stras, a President Trump appointee who FFRF highlighted in its 2020 report on the Christian nationalist takeover of the federal courts, wrote for the majority, saying only the federal government may sue to enforce Section 2. For context, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits states from creating voting laws that discriminate against voters on the basis of race, and it has become one of the cornerstones of our country’s civil rights laws since it was enacted in 1964.

This is thin gruel and tortured logic.  To say that this is a church/state issue because only a fully franchised citizenry can enforce the Constitution, or that the federal courts are being infested with Christian nationalists, does not show that voting rights is a church/state issue. If you want to say that, then any belief or act that can be connected with Christianity or Christian nationalism becomes a church/state issue. But fighting for voting rights does nothing to keep that First Amendment wall up.

In fact, I’d say that those who benefit most from enforcing voting rights, minorities who are mostly black, are those most likely to be religious. As a 2018 Pew Poll found, and this has been true for decades, “Black Americans are more likely than overall public to be Christian, Protestant.” That doesn’t mean that they’re more likely to be “Christian Nationalists,” of course, but the more religious someone is, the more likely they are to favor erasing the wall between church and state. Atheists don’t oppose the Establishment Clause.

The issue is certainly one of civil rights, but not Establishment Clause rights.

If the FFRF wants to expand its mission, it should admit that frankly, and not engage in this kind of circumlocution to justify its expansion. It’s unseemly and illogical. And, in the case of transgender activisim, by buying into progressive politics, the creep can even be harmful.

And this is my say as an Honorary Board member. The ACLU and the SPLC were once fine secular organizations devoted to protecting everyone’s civil rights.  Now both are circling the drain (the SPLC is actually in the drain) because they decided that social justice is as important—or more important—than civil rights. I’d hate to see my beloved FFRF go the same route.

Chronicle op-ed gives arguments for institutional neutrality

June 28, 2023 • 12:00 pm

If you’re an academic and your college or university has issued a ringing statement in favor of political, ideological or moral positions, that might make you feel good. But in the long run it’s bad, for taking institutional positions (as opposed to personal ones) acts to chill the speech of others.  As I’ve said many times, institutional neutrality is the position of the University of Chicago, codified in the 1967 Kalven Report. While some “stands” are allowed by the University and its units and departments, those are limited to positions that further the university’s educational mission. You can see, for example, a 2020 pro-DACA statement issued by our former provost, and its rationale as part of the University’s mission.  Of course, Chicago encourages its members to speak freely as individuals, but not as official units or representatives of the University. I can say what I want about Trump, but my department or the University cannot.

For decades, we were the only university in America that had this policy, but now we’re joined by an enlightened University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  That’s two—out of nearly 4,000 degree-granting institutions in America—and that’s pathetic. Schools just can’t restrain themselves from proclaiming their political and moral virtues, but it’s at the cost of stifling free speech. That’s the rationale for Kalven.  I’ll bet that if you’re at a “progressive” school like Berkeley, Oberlin, Harvard, or Smith, you’ll have seen these statements all over the place in the last five years.

This short op-ed in the Chronicle of Higher Education by David Bell, a history professor at Princeton, gives the arguments for institutional neutrality as they apply to colleges and universities. But the policy could usefully be applied in many institutions.

Here are the kinds of statements that universities and departments make:

The claims about moral obligation are eloquent, passionate, and heartfelt, and often invoke shameful aspects of a discipline’s political past. For instance, the “Statement on Anti-Racism” issued by the Princeton English department after the killing of George Floyd decried “literary study’s long history as a prop to the worst forces of imperialism and nationalism, and its role in underwriting crimes of slavery and discrimination.” The department of religious studies at the University of Iowa promised: “We will work to acknowledge and expose the racist histories of our discipline and of the religions that most of us have studied and taught.” A statement from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health lambasted the role of public-health professionals in promoting “slavery, Jim Crow, scientific racism, eugenics, and other structural atrocities.” Taking a slightly different tack, the department of classical studies at Boston University spoke to the present day, condemning “the appropriation of classical antiquity as a tool of white supremacy, nationalism, and gender or class-based discrimination.”

The supposed rationale and the problems it raises:

By invoking their discipline’s political histories and uses in this manner, the statements imply that taking a stance on current affairs constitutes a self-evident and morally necessary corrective, a form of reparation for past political sins. The statement by the Princeton English department, for instance, asserts that the discipline’s history “compels us … to actively dissociate literary studies from their colonial and racist uses.” But in taking this stance, the statements leap over several crucial questions. Why should academic units of a university, as opposed to individual scholars or disciplinary organizations, be making these pronouncements? What if certain members of the unit do not agree with them, or consider them factually flawed? What if they feel that their unit should be issuing statements about a different issue than the one chosen, or disagree about the language of the statement and the specific actions called for? What if something in the statement violates their moral convictions?

And why universities should NOT be making these statements. I’d think this would be self-evident, but it’s clearly not, because we have to keep making these point over and over again—even at Chicago!

The statements I have quoted mostly do not bear individual signatures and say nothing about the process by which they were produced. They generally use the first-person plural and leave the impression that they express unanimous, collective sentiments.

I am sure that in many cases they have indeed expressed unanimous viewpoints. But how can anyone be sure? Imagine a case in which a department chair and the most senior, influential, tenured professors all insist passionately that their department needs to issue a statement on a burning issue of the moment. How likely is it that a pre-tenure or non-tenure-track professor would dare to oppose them? We do not need advanced cultural theory to understand how intimidating it can be for an untenured instructor to speak out against powerful senior colleagues.

Public statements become still more problematic when they go beyond expressing a view on a current issue, and pledge members of the unit to engage in particular sorts of academic work — for instance, scholarship that exposes the racist histories of major religions, or classroom teaching that is explicitly antiracist. The Princeton English department, for instance, pledged to “strive for active antiracism in our classrooms and our scholarship as a means of raising awareness and changing consciousness.” To be sure, vulnerable junior scholars are always going to feel pressure to write and teach in ways that their senior colleagues approve of. But formal statements issued in the name of an entire department, program, or school increase this pressure. And while academic work itself may indeed always have potential political stakes, the choice of political stance says nothing about the quality of that work. Public statements that commit a unit’s members to do certain sorts of work blur this distinction. They can create the impression that the subject scholars choose to work on, and the stance they take on it, will matter as much as how well they do the work when it comes to promotion and tenure.

At the end Bell brings up Kalven again:

It may well be naïve to think that a university can ever be a wholly neutral space, and that it can maintain, as the Kalven Report put it, “an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures.” It is not naïve, however, to recognize that universities host scholars with different, often conflicting beliefs, and that these differences need to be respected and protected. Allowing academic units to issue public statements on current affairs erodes that respect and those protections.

Is that so hard to realize? Or do people want universities in which everybody agrees on everything?  I’m baffled by the failure of fellow academics to see this simple point: you can make personal statements all you want, but official ones put a damper on the open discourse essential to a university.  Maybe I should put it in simple language by writing a children’s book: “The Little Professor’s Guide to Free Speech”.

Or, as Stanley Fish already wrote in a book for adults, “Save the world on your own time.”

FIRE’s choice of America’s ten worst colleges for free speech

February 2, 2023 • 9:35 am

It’s that time of year again: the time when the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) nominates its ten worst colleges of the year for free speech. (Their list of the best colleges is here, with the University of Chicago back up to #1.)

But today we get an honor roll of shame. Before giving that list, which is not ranked but contains ten miscreant colleges, I’ll show you the précis that came with their email. Note that Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., after appearing on this list for four years, has made the “lifetime censorship list.”:

Every year, FIRE names and shames the worst colleges in the United States for free speech. The new list is out, so please dig in. Frankly, there are some amazing entries this year. (Spoiler alert: art history professor fired for teaching art history, highly “sus” conduct around the airing of a documentary on … free speech, and a college that learned when you play games with faculty speech on FIRE’s watch, you get burned — and much, much more.)Many people get that we have fun with this list every year — guilty as charged. But on the inside? We’re just trying not to give in to despair. After all, it gets frustrating to have to repeatedly tell college and university administrators to stop violating student and faculty rights.Happily, we are making progress on that front, and sharing this list contributes to that progress. Every year, more and more people see the annual “10 Worst” list. More alumni leverage it to fight for change in their schools. Prospective students consider it when deciding where to spend their time and money. And, very often, a school that makes an appearance on the list does not make another one. Unfortunately, a few schools, like Yale University, DePaul University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Syracuse University, make the list so often they merit special recognition, in the form of FIRE’s Lifetime Censorship Award. This year, Georgetown University’s breathtaking 112-day investigation into an incoming lecturer’s 45-word tweet earned it that infamous distinction. (By the way, we’ve made it easy for you to tell Georgetown’s president what you think — just click here.)

Click below to read: I’ll show the ten losers and give a few words (FIRE’s are indented, mine flush left):

Again, the order is random as FIRE doesn’t give a ranking. I’ve added links to the school names.

1.) Hamline University (Saint Paul, Minnesota)

Art history professor punished, called “Islamophobic” for showing 14th century painting depicting prophet Muhammad in art history class.

Hamline University, a Minnesota liberal arts college, made international headlines for illiberal art censorship after it punished a professor who dared to show historic Islamic art during a lesson on Islamic art history.

We’ve read about this several times on this site, and the faculty recently gave a big “no confidence” vote to Fayneese Miller, the school’s president. She will, I suspect, soon be gone, and Hamline is the butt of everyone’s jokes.

2.) Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania.

Nittany Lion or Cowardly Lion? Penn State cancels student group’s event after initially defending its right to proceed.

On October 24, Uncensored America was set to host Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and conservative comedian Alex Stein for a comedy show on campus. A planned protest formed outside the venue. But, amid reports that a few in that crowd of hundreds were involved in skirmishes, Penn State canceled the event before it even began. The university also told protesters to disperse, citing “the threat of escalating violence.” Critically, the two violent incidents, one involving spitting, the other pepper spray, were caught on video showing police standing by doing nothing while students and a speaker were assaulted.

. . . One thing is clear: Penn State may defend free expression with words, but when actions are necessary, the university is all-too-willing to turn tail, fleeing from its First Amendment obligations and letting disruptors win.

Penn State didn’t come clean about the threats that supposedly led it to cancel the event, but simply said that it was a “safety risk” (FIRE had asked it to reveal the specific threats that led to the cancellation).

3.) Collin College (McKinney, Texas)

The lesson Collin College can’t seem to learn: When you play games with faculty speech on FIRE’s watch, you get burned.

Given that Collin College has earned a reputation as the “epicenter of censorship in Texas,” it is no surprise that the college makes its third straight appearance on our infamous list.

What did they do? Several things. They warned a history professor about her tweets about the Mike Pence-Kamala Harris debate (and lost a $70,000 lawsuit about that); it fired two professors, apparently for being officers in a non-bargaining faculty union (they’d also criticized the school’s handling of Covid-19), and for that lost another lawsuit and reinstated one professor; and it fired a history professor “for advocating for the removal of Confederate statues and criticizing the college’s COVID-19 policies” (that lawsuit is proceeding). FIRE has sued Collin College three times for violating faculty rights.

4.) Texas A&M  (College Station, Texas)

Texas A&M forgets the First Amendment, repeatedly ignores student groups’ rights.

Journalists, fish, and drag queens: Oh my! In 2022, Texas A&M University stepped on the rights of all kinds of student groups, from the university’s preeminent student paper, to several LGBTQ rights organizations, to a freshman orientation club.

The University violated the rights of several student organizations, all in a singe year.

5.) University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

Penn Law dean pressured to “do something” about controversial professor, opts to abandon academic freedom.

Penn Law is willfully ignoring its commitment to free speech and academic freedom in an effort to oust Amy Wax, the tenured professor whose controversial comments on race and immigration have come to define her academic career.

Wax, who spoke at the Stanford Academic Freedom Conference, has made quite a few controversial remarks, and I consider some of them to be offensive and borderline racist. But the university, which should have left her alone, instituted disciplinary charges, including causing “harm.” It is these hard cases where free speech must be defended most vigorously. Although Penn is a private school, it has a strong open expression code that “supports and cherishes the concepts of freedom of thought, inquiry, speech, and lawful assembly.”

6.)  Emerson (Boston, Massachusetts)

Emerson still “kinda sus,” prevents student group from advertising a documentary about — drumroll please — free speech.

First, they were guilty of “suspending and investigating” Turning Point USA for distributing stickers on campus reading “China Kinda Sus,” clearly meaning “China Kinda Sucks”. The admin then put a formal warning on the group’s record.  Sorry, but that’s free speech. But that still wasn’t enough: they continued to overturn free speech:

. . . college administrators denied TPUSA’s request to screen a CBS News documentary about free speech on campus because of alleged factual inaccuracies in the promotional material. Then, it denied approval to post promotional materials for another documentary because the advertisements would provoke “negative responses.”

As I recall, this isn’t Emerson’s first brush with restricting speech.

7.)  Emporia State (Emporia, Kansas)

Emporia State seizes opportunity to axe both tenure protections and 33 faculty members.

Last fall, Emporia State University seized the opportunity to spurn academic freedom and effectively end tenure protections. Under a newly adopted policy, it fired more than 30 faculty members — including one whose newspaper op-ed criticizing the school’s then-impending decision opened with: “I may be fired for writing this.”

They then instituted a policy that allowed them to fire faculty, including tenured faculty, for all kinds of wonky and unjustifiable reasons—and with 30 days notice!

8.) Tennessee Tech (Cookeville, Tennessee)

FIRE dresses down Tennessee Tech for punishing student groups over drag show.

Oldham canceled all campus events of the Lambda Gay-Straight Alliance and the Tech Players student groups after a video of their August 2022 drag show surfaced online. Speaking to the entire campus community, Oldham proclaimed that he was “disturbed,” “dismayed,” and “offended by” the show’s apparent “disparaging mockery toward any religious group.” He banned the students from hosting campus events “pending a review,” which is still ongoing. No disciplinary charges, no hearing, no chance to contest this clearly unlawful prior restraint, just five months (and counting) of censorship for wounding Oldham’s delicate sensibilities.

This is a state school and the censorship above violates the First Amendment. FIRE has complained, but there appear to be no results yet.

9.) The University of Oregon (Eugene, Oregon)

University of Oregon puts words in teachers’ mouths, requires faculty to submit DEI statements to be eligible for hiring, promotion, and tenure.

Are you surprised? The U of O requires all current and prospective faculty to submit DEI statements to be eligible for hiring, promotion, or tenure. This is the first time I’ve seen FIRE go after these statements, which are ubiquitous in America, and are ripe for a lawsuit based on compelled speech. All that’s needed is one person with “standing”: a faculty member who hasn’t been promoted or given tenure because of insufficient DEI statements, or someone not hired on the grounds of a flawed DEI statement (the last one would be hard to prove). But this will happen, and DEI statements will become banned in all state schools or those receiving federal funds. From FIRE:

Oregon. . . directed faculty search committees to use a rubric when evaluating DEI statements, which are intended to further UO’s goals of “becoming an institution committed to antiracism and other forms of anti-oppression.” The rubric gives low scores to an applicant who, for example, says “it’s better not to have outreach or affinity groups aimed at underrepresented individuals because it keeps them separate from everyone else, or will make them feel less valued,” or describes “only activities that are already the expectation of faculty (mentoring, treating all students the same regardless of background, etc.).”

On the other hand, applicants who discuss DEI as a “core [value] that every faculty member should actively contribute to advancing,” and applicants or faculty members who intend to be “strong advocate[s]” for DEI, will earn high scores. This ideological litmus test applies to tenure-track faculty, faculty seeking promotion or tenure, faculty undergoing tenure review, and prospective faculty. Basically, if you want to work at UO, you have to pledge allegiance to and promote administrators’ DEI vision.

These requirements violate faculty’s freedom of expression and academic freedom, as we told the university. Just imagine if a public university bound by the First Amendment (as the University of Oregon is) evaluated faculty based on their commitment to patriotism or color-blindness or socialism.

Berkeley and other state schools use rubrics as well. In my view they are unconstitutional and thus illegal, and I’d love to see somebody file a lawsuit. Fortunately, we don’t use them at the University of Chicago, for they are implicitly forbidden by our Shils Report.

10.) Loyola University New Orleans (New Orleans, Louisiana). 

LOYNO sanctions professor, stifles student’s protected speech.

Loyola University New Orleans spent the last two-and-a-half years subjecting professor Walter Block to investigations and sanctions for his protected speech. Despite its strong promises of free speech and academic freedom, the university targeted Block for everything from his teaching of particular economic theories to his classroom discussions of Gandhi and Hitler.

After a June 2020 student-created petition calling for Block’s termination began circulating, LOYNO defended Block’s classroom speech. But it didn’t have his back for long. In 2021, Loyola determined that some of Block’s teachings on the gender wage gap and the economics of slavery created a “hostile learning environment.” It forced Block to undergo mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion training.

After this, Block’s speech received more complaints and he had to take yet more training. Loyola is a private Jesuit university, so Block’s speech may not be protected, but all colleges should adhere to First-Amendment principles. I’m not sure what he said about Gandhi and Hitler, as not all classroom “speech” is protected. Loyola, however, makes strong promises of free speech. Further, the administration “cracked down on a student promoting a pro-choice march.”

You can read the details for each University by going to the site, and also see the lifetime raspberry that Georgetown University got:

Because this is the fourth time Georgetown appeared on this list (last year it suspended a faculty member for critical tweets about the new Supreme Court justice nominee), it makes the lifetime censorship list.  And there’s more:

For years, the university refused to recognize the pro-choice student group H*yas for Choice. It argued that doing so would conflict with its Catholic and Jesuit mission. But the university’s speech and expression policy explicitly states that only “time, place and manner” considerations can govern “the expression of ideas and sharing of information that is the very life of the university.” What’s more, H*yas for Choice was denied recognition despite the existence of recognized groups of Muslim and Jewish students who, by their nature, explicitly reject Catholic beliefs.

Let’s also not forget that Georgetown stopped students from tabling for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign — an action so censorial it drew the attention of Congress. There was also the time its satellite campus in Qatar shut down a debate about whether God should be portrayed as a woman. It’s no surprise then, that Georgetown ranks near the very bottom of FIRE’s annual College Free Speech Rankings.

For these reasons, Georgetown joins Yale University, DePaul University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Syracuse University as a recipient of FIRE’s infamous Lifetime Censorship Award.

Raspberries to these schools!