Ohio Northern University Prof Removed From His Classroom After Objecting to DEI Policies
“I was immediately barred from teaching, banished from campus”
When I say this man was removed from his classroom, I mean physically, by law enforcement. This is insane.
Professor Scott Gerber writes at the Wall Street Journal:
DEI Brings Kafka to My Law School
Ada, Ohio
Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested, prosecuted and killed by an inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. I’m Josef K.
Around 1 p.m. on Friday, April 14, Ohio Northern University campus security officers entered my classroom with my students present and escorted me to the dean’s office. Armed town police followed me down the hall. My students appeared shocked and frightened. I know I was. I was immediately barred from teaching, banished from campus, and told that if I didn’t sign a separation agreement and release of claims by April 21, ONU would commence dismissal proceedings against me. The grounds: “Collegiality.” The specifics: None.
Josef K. never learns what he’s alleged to have done wrong. The offenses I’ve allegedly committed haven’t been revealed to me, either. But I have an educated guess.
Like many universities, ONU is aggressively pursuing “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives. I have objected publicly as vice chairman of the University Council, an elected faculty governance body, and in newspaper op-eds and on television, to DEI efforts that don’t include viewpoint diversity and would lead to illegal discrimination in employment and admissions.
The same week I was led out of my classroom by police and campus security, I published an op-ed defending Justice Clarence Thomas’s right to have friends—even rich ones. The week before that, I gave a TV interview in which I criticized DEI programs that discriminate against white men in the name of “racial and social justice” and for being indifferent to the type of diversity higher education should value most: viewpoint diversity. The week prior, I published op-eds in a national newspaper and an Ohio one making the same points.
I requested during a University Council meeting earlier this semester that ONU’s DEI program address viewpoint diversity. The administration responded, brusquely, that viewpoint diversity is “not part of our diversity, belonging and inclusion plan.”
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Comments
The offense is openly opposing the university administration.
Ohio University is determined to make this prof rich. Suing will be a long, arduous process, but it will undoubtedly pay off in the end. He is going to be very, very rich.
I sure hope so! The sooner the better so a lesson is sent to other schools.
The public “perp walk” and “arrest” in front of his students during a class are great aggravating factors, and pretty much demolish any claim of “good faith” by the school authorities. Should be good basis for punitive damages.