- Professor says "Yes, sir" to student during a class.
- Student asks them to use different pronouns, professor refuses
- student files formal complaint with the school and school runs formal investigation
- "The university determined that Meriwether created a "hostile environment" for the unnamed student, eventually placing a written warning in his personnel file and threatening "further corrective actions," according to ADF.
- US Court of Appeals rules in favor of professor, "The court ruled that university officials violated the professor's free speech rights when they disciplined him."
- University says that they "adamantly deny that anyone at Shawnee State deprived Dr. Meriwether of his free speech rights or his rights to freely exercise his religion"
The university saying they did not deprive him of his free speech rights seems pretty false given the contents of the article.
There is no "religious right" to be an abusive asshole. Further, there is no religion whose tenets require you to be abusive to trans people, or which even suggest such behavior.
I know that's the same argument the professor was making, essentially, but forget the specific details of this case for the moment and look at it in the abstract. You -- and he -- are essentially arguing that the legal right to religious freedom carries an ancillary right to be actively insulting to others who are required to interact with you in entirely non-religious contexts. That strikes me as a hell of a reach. If you genuinely feel that your religion obligates you to be an asshole to people who you believe are violating its tenets, then maybe the onus should be on you to not choose a career that may put you in regular contact with those people.
By that logic, auto emissions test locations would never issue failing tests for their customers cars, and IT cert companies would never issue failing grades to people who take their cert tests.
College students are consumers not customers. From the article in Inside Higher Education:
>>There is a fundamental tension between applying the student as customer paradigm vs. society as customer paradigm to higher education. If students are the customer, then the retail model requires them to be right. The aphorism “The customer is always right” is the guiding principle. Some faculty members express experiencing a tacit pressure to relax standards based on serving the student as a customer. Customer-service logic suggests: A grades make happy students; happy students are good customers; good customers are repeat customers; repeat customers tell friends; referrals are good for business.
Yet students are not always right. And neither are universities. Not fully understanding who the customer is in higher education tends toward granting students academic concessions. At four-year colleges, the A grade has increased between five and six percentage points every decade for the last 30 years and is now three times more prevalent than in 1960. Today, the A is the most common grade at four-year institutions. Some students and parents believe that, if they complain enough, a faculty member will change a grade. And if the faculty does not, then they call the manager.
The retail model is not only about grades. Most retail establishments maintain return and exchange policies when customers are not satisfied. Students erroneously try to apply the same policies. I’ve had students who have argued, “I paid for this class and didn’t get anything out of it, so I shouldn’t have to pay.” Usually at semester’s end, a number of students inquire about getting refunds for classes they want to drop because they may not pass the class. Most recently, I encountered a graduate student who wanted a “store credit” for a class that she never completed to be applied to a different class in an upcoming semester<<
One of the peculiarities of the situation is that because so many Universities receive federal funding, they wind up being held accountable as if they were some other government institution. I suspect if this had happened at a totally private college taking in no federal money the case would have been decided differently.
I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but I would guess that the number of private colleges _not_ taking federal money in one form or another is microscopic, if any even exist at all. Private institutions get on the hook for this kind of stuff all the time just for taking state/federal assistance for their school lunch program.
> Among the other schools that don’t participate in Title IV financial-aid programs are Grove City College in Pennsylvania; Christendom College in Virginia; Pensacola Christian College in Florida; Patrick Henry College in Virginia; and tiny Wyoming Catholic College and Gutenberg College in Oregon, which have 150 and 22 students, respectively. At least one Orthodox Jewish institution, Yeshiva Toras Chaim Talmudic Seminary of Denver, also opts out of Title IV, -- https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/the-co...
This is a public university in a town of 20k, which is 70% Republican, whose main employers are a local hospital, a prison, a railroad, a lumberyard, and this school. This guy wins this case 99% of the time which is why they settled. And it's all because the school just wanted him to be respectful to a student.
No, they wanted him to call the student something he disagreed with. He offered to call them by name and not refer to their sex as I understood it. They wanted him to explicitly participate in the "pronouns" thing, which he disagreed with. There can and should be a difference between being respectful and going along with someone else's "game" even if that's important to them. It's more like asking him to make a positive religious statement, imo, when the respectful thing could just be to say everyone is entitled to their own beliefs.
Yeah, but you can see how this would upset a student, in a philosophy class, being taught the Socratic method, with a professor who prefers to refer to their students by Mr. And Ms. as a "formal manner of addressing students helps them view the academic enterprise as a serious, weighty endeavor." ... except for that trans person who I will refer to by their last name only.
A college that takes Federal funds is subject to harsher scrutiny.
>Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) prohibits federal agencies from discriminating against employees or applicants for employment because of their religious beliefs in hiring, firing and other terms and conditions of employment. Additionally, Title VII requires federal agencies to reasonably accommodate the religious beliefs or practices of employees or applicants unless doing so would impose an undue hardship upon the agency.
Religion has something to do with this because, quoting the article:
> According to ADF, the university ruled that Meriwether should use the student's correct pronouns — which Meriwether argued spoke "contrary to his religious convictions and philosophical beliefs."
So can I argue that it's my religious belief that I need to call everyone 'jackass'?
I would think there would need to be actual religious grounds for the claim, which I don't believe there are.
No religion I'm aware of says you can't address someone by the pronouns for their preferred gender identity. Can you really just say "religion!" and then do whatever you want?
> Although the philosophy professor offered to use the student’s preferred first or last name, and university officials initially agreed that was an acceptable compromise, officials then changed course and forced Dr. Meriwether either to speak what he believed to be untrue or to remain silent, all contrary to his own Christian convictions and philosophical beliefs.
The argument appears to be that Meriwether does not believe the student's preferred pronoun is correct, and using it would therefore be a falsehood which violates his Christian belief.
> Can you really just say "religion!" and then do whatever you want?
Whether or not you can do so really depends on what "religion!" you're actually claiming, and the biases of the people involved in trying your case.
What this kind of thing _usually_ signals in the US is "a conservative Christian is discriminating against an LGBT person in some way, and claiming that their first amendment freedom of religion rights are being violated if they aren't allowed to continue discriminating."
And basically that succeeds sometimes, because Christianity is the dominant religion in the country; but more so because the vocal part of Christianity that is rabidly anti-LGBT is surprisingly well-funded and surprisingly oft-found in places that matter. In this case, the federal court of appeals.
1. It's different for professors there is legal precedent that their speech is protected while teaching.
2. If a school accepts public funds it capitulates it's private ownership
3. the professor tried to compromise multiple times.
I am usually on the side of the student in these situations. Although I'm not religious I can understand how it's abusive to both sides, but only one side tried to compromise.
hmmm. definitely a dick move but not sure about "hostile" (definitely passive aggressive).
It's a base level of respect to address people as the ask to be addressed. The student was within reason to complain but it never should have gone past a direct conversation w/ admin on standards of behavior.
> It's a base level of respect to address people as the ask to be addressed. The student was within reason to complain but it never should have gone past a direct conversation w/ admin on standards of behavior.
Depends. If you ask me to use "Allah" as your pronoun, as an hypothetical Muslim, it could violate my religious rights and I might not want to do it. The whole made up pronouns thing has absolutely nothing to do with correct English.
> whole made up pronouns thing has absolutely nothing to do with correct English
she/he are not made up, and language is constantly changing based on what's being spoken by the population.
Considering that there's a lot of hate being fomented against trans people, I'm assuming the professor was passive aggressively saying "fuck you" to that person's stated identity.
> Considering that there's a lot of hate being fomented against trans people, I'm assuming the professor was passive aggressively saying "fuck you" to that person's stated identity.
A simple solution would be to eliminate all gendered pronouns in English and stick to "they/them" for everybody. Made up pronouns are an absurd trend.
There is no "free speech" right to be a belligerent, disrespectful, abusive asshole to a student, and then try to weasel out of it because of bullshit "religious convictions".
This simply is not a "free speech" issue. It's a behavioral, conduct-related issue. It's about how this person treated a student; someone he was being paid to educate.
The professor did, in fact, create a hostile environment.
The professor should be fired and the lawsuit should be dismissed with extreme prejudice.
Being able to say things that others disapprove of is the essence of free speech. Or, as Voltaire said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
That right stops once the speech becomes abusive. Professors don't get to abuse students.
For instance, a professor could make sexual comments about a student. That, too, by your definition, would be "free speech", and thus allowable. In other words, you're completely off-base here and need to re-assess your argument.
This is the key part. It's a wiggle word. It's totally subjective. Any person can call any thing "abusive". So giving this concession 100% nullifies free speech. This is why the first amendment doesn't include things like "unless it is abusive".
It is specifically meant to protect the cases which someone may identify as "abusive"
The whole point of free speech is to protect belligerent, disrespectful, and abusive speech (with certain limitations such as threats of violence).
We don't need a constitutional protection of our right to compliment each others outfits. No body tries to limit any one elses speech when they agree with it. The reason we put that in our constitution was to ensure free speech in times when it does offend people.
Good thing the courts get this and made the right ruling.
Sorry, nope. Not in this context; the context of a professor-student relationship where the professor is obligated to treat students with basic respect.
I must have missed the, "this doesn't count for public employees if they are a professor, then their constitutional requirement is to be nice" clause in the first amendment. Could you point that piece out to me?
If they are a tenured Professor at a public university, 100% , unequivocally, no exceptions, yes.
The people who want to kill free speech in order to avoid some minor discomfort see these arguments as some kind of trump card. "Do you really want free speech even when it's you that someone is saying something mean to?"
Yes I do.
I'm a Jew and I support the right to hold Klan rallies and Nazi marches. I support throwing them in prison if they threaten assault or assault anybody but I support their right to say anything they want up to that point.
I support free speech. Specifically in the cases when it's someone else saying something I don't like because that is literally what free speech means.
>> If they are a tenured Professor at a public university, 100% , unequivocally, no exceptions, yes.
"100%, unequivocally,y No exceptions?" You literally just cited an exception -- a threat (a type of speech). So we all draw a line somewhere, including you.
Though we all here know you're kidding yourself and if somebody you love was distraught over being verbally abused by a professor for no apparent reason you'd want the situation changed.
Also I'm rereading this. Your question was regarding calling my daughter something. And that is what I'm responding "unequivocally, no exceptions, yes"
I wouldn't argue that free speech has no exceptions. It clearly does. I went out of my way to point out the exceptions in my own post. I'm 100% for extreme free speech except in cases of direct threats of physical violence.
The government can't punish people for exercising their free speech rights. That's exactly what the court ruled, and exactly why he got this big payday. The "consequences" you're referring to might be social ostracization or something like that.
What if a person disagrees that requesting pronouns from a gender other than their birth sex is not basic respect? You’re worldview leaves us powerless to address these tough questions.
"You can’t say something important about anything ever, without offending. Important speech about important issues, especially contentious issues, is instantly offensive."
When the union got involved and the adjudicator laughed in his face over his religious claims I think that was the final nail in this case. Put that in front of a jury and he wins hands down.
I think he was belated the student continued to complain after the compromise was made because he knew he'd win this in the end.
yes, but importantly, it's implying male gender (just explaining the thinking here, not my viewpoint). it's not hard to understand that some people don't want to be addressed Sir since it's like Mister or "he".
I guess it boils down to this: does calling a student by the wrong gender count as hostility or free speech? (And I guess student to teacher to)
Whether the student is trans isn’t a pertinent factor, after all the government officially recognizes the right to change sex/gender (such as on your driver’s license)
It certainly can count as both hostility and free speech. Often the most contentious examples of free speech are highly hostile: hate speech, for example. Therefore the context is rather, is this protected speech? A private company can discipline an employee for their speech in the name of the company, and that would be okay, since that is not protected speech. And the ruling by the court appears to be that this is indeed protected speech, in which case the free speech categorization trumps the hostility categorization.
You're missing the core of point which is -- does that mean a teacher calling your son "Ma'am" is also protected speech? If not, who/what is the official source-of-truth on which pronouns a teacher can use to a student?
And then secondly, if a student dislikes it, and addresses the (male?) professor as Ma'am, does that student have equal protection from all consequences?
I think the core point is addressed:
Based on the ruling, a teacher calling someone's son "Ma'am" should also be protected speech.
The ruling makes no judgement on what the student can say, as the student is not an employee of the college. I would imagine that the college is able to enact consequences to the student's speech, and not run afoul of legal issues, but I am not a lawyer.
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