Prof Targeted for Discipline for Criticizing Diversity Training Resigns

Prof Targeted for Discipline for Criticizing Diversity Training Resigns

The Duke University professor who was in hot water for criticizing diversity training has quit. This is what you face if you work in higher education now.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Duke Professor Announces Resignation After Criticizing ‘Illiberal Roots’ of Anti-Racism Training Program

A professor at Duke University’s Divinity School has announced his intention to resign after receiving backlash from colleagues and school administrators for criticizing an anti-racism training program.

Paul Griffiths, the Warren professor of Catholic theology, set off a firestorm in early February when he responded to a faculty-wide email sent by associate professor Anathea Portier-Young that encouraged attendance at a two-day anti-racism program, the Washington Times reported Monday.

Griffiths responded to the email by warning his colleagues not to attend, saying the program had “illiberal roots and totalitarian tendencies.”

“I exhort you not to attend this training,” Griffiths wrote. “Don’t lay waste your time by doing so. It’ll be, I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid: there’ll be bromides, cliches, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty. When (if) it gets beyond that, its illiberal roots and totalitarian tendencies will show.”

While some colleagues responded by expressing their interest in attending, Elaine Heath, dean of the divinity school, attacked Griffiths for using email “to humiliate or undermine individual colleagues or groups of colleagues with whom we disagree.”

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