Illinois Academe
The Official Newspaper of AAUP-IL
Fall 2004 - HTML

Religious Orthodoxies
By John K. Wilson

Some of the most pervasive restrictions on academic freedom occur at religious colleges. It is often wrongly assumed that religious institutions are allowed to violate academic freedom because of their religious doctrines. The AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles included a provision allowing religious universities to impose restrictions on academic freedom based on their faith, so long as faculty and students are forewarned. However, the AAUP effectively repealed this rule in its 1970 Interpretive Statements, which notes that the special exemption for religious institutions is no longer needed nor desired.

The restrictions on academic freedom in the past year have been particularly alarming at Catholic institutions. A group called the Cardinal Newman Society has been pressuring Catholic officials to ban from campus any speaker who deviates from Catholic doctrines. According to the Associated Press, “Most Catholic schools already vet commencement speakers and honorary degree recipients for their positions on key Catholic issues.” At Ave Maria College, Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, funder of this new conservative Catholic university, has promised, “there will be no pro-abortion politicians on campus giving talks or getting honorary degrees.”

On Feb. 13, 2004, Archbishop James P. Keleher of Kansas City, Kan declared that Catholic institutions must ban politicians who support abortion rights from speaking on campus, and no pro-abortion rights speaker or politician should be allowed to “address, give workshops, or otherwise make any presentation” at Catholic institutions. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a pro-choice Catholic, spoke the day before at the University of St. Mary about education and economic development.

Seton Hall University: religious officials called the “conferral of awards to people who publicly espouse views contrary to the university’s fundamental Catholic identity” to be a “serious lapse” after a judge who had struck down a ban on so-called “partial-birth” abortion was honored. Newark Archbishop John Myers, the president of the board of trustees, called the award “profoundly offensive and contrary to the Catholic mission and identity” of the university, and promised to prevent it from happening again.

Public Universities and Religion
The most pervasive threat to freedom of religion comes from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which is a leading conservative civil liberties group that normally is a strong defender of academic freedom. However, FIRE is asserting that religious student organizations at public colleges should have the right to exclude anyone with dissenting ideas from serving as leaders or members, and is threatening lawsuits against public colleges that require student groups to follow non-discrimination policies. FIRE’s approach (to favor the group’s right to exclude over the individual’s right to be included) poses several dangers. First, colleges should be given the leeway to decide what approach to student organizations works best for their campus. Second, students have a right to be included in student groups even if they may dissent from some of the beliefs of that organization. (By FIRE’s reasoning, a Catholic student could be banned from a Catholic student group for views supporting abortion rights or gay marriage or women priests.) Finally, enforcing exclusionary student organization constitutions will require public colleges to examine the religious and political beliefs of students to determine if they should be excluded. It is far better to allow all students to join any student organization, and allow students to select the leadership they want.

University of Utah: Christina Axson-Flynn, a former theater student and a devout Mormon, refused to “take the name of God or Christ in vain” or use certain “offensive” words during in-class presentations of plays. When theater instructors refused to allow her to change scripts to fit her beliefs, she sued. On February 3, 2004 the Tenth Circuit reversed a lower court decision and ruled on behalf of Axson-Flynn. The court concluded that “there is a genuine issue of material fact as to whether [the professors’] justification for the script adherence requirement was truly pedagogical or whether it was pretext for religious discrimination.” It may seem absurd that the court actually thought that asking theater students to follow the script of a play was a ploy in order to discrimination against religious individuals. Yet that was the ruling of the court, and the University of Utah reached a settlement with Axson-Flynn that now entitles students to alter the scripts in a theater class.