Divinity Professor Forced to Resign After Criticizing P.C. Indoctrination

Why is there such a striking lack of intellectual diversity in academia? Does everyone just happen to agree with everyone else about everything? Not at all. But those who don’t agree with the currently politically correct opinion either let themselves be persuaded, or they keep their mouths shut. Otherwise they will end up like Paul Griffiths of Duke Divinity School.

The professor of Catholic theology was invited along with the rest of the faculty to attend a 2-day racial equality brainwashing session of the type Black Lives Matter militants insist be imposed. He imprudently sent out an email to the other faculty pointing out that it would be a waste of time:

“It’ll be, I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid: there’ll be bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty.

“When (if) it gets beyond that, its illiberal roots and totalitarian tendencies will show,” he continued. “Events of this sort are definitively anti-intellectual.”

As if to prove just how anti-intellectual,

Just a few hours later, Elaine Heath, the school’s dean, rebuked Griffiths for daring to criticize the training in such an open forum.

So much for the open marketplace of ideas.

“The use of mass emails to express racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry is offensive and unacceptable, especially in a Christian institution,” she said.

Racists, sexists, and bigots must be punished. Griffiths was subjected to two separate disciplinary proceedings. A moonbat associate professor named Anathea Portier-Young, a gung-ho supporter of the marathon indoctrination session, hit him with a harassment complaint.

In addition, Heath banned him from participating in faculty meetings and said he would no longer receive research or travel funding.

Griffiths called the actions taken against him nothing more than “reprisals” to “discipline” him for expressing an opinion different from that of the administration.

The reprisals worked; he has been forced to resign.

Thomas Pfau, who has been a member of the Duke Divinity School faculty for 26 years, wrote in an email that he feels “fundamentally in agreement” with Griffiths’ comments. He described the school as an “intellectual asylum.”

“Any academic unit, DDS included, can only flourish if differences of opinion on any variety of subjects are respected and engaged on their intrinsic merits,” Pfau wrote. “Having reviewed Paul Griffiths’ note several times, I find nothing in it that could even remotely be said to ‘express racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry.’”

Sounds like this Pfau thought criminal is a racist sexist bigot too. They had better cut his funding and force him to resign, as an example to others, lest the rebellion spread.

On a tip from Varla.