The University of California, Berkeley, is being forced to turn over the details of its discriminatory hiring scheme, under a legal case brought by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Express (FIRE).
Likewise, a college in San Antonio, Texas, is being warned to resolve a fight outside of court after it fired a biology professor for teaching biology.
This from wndnewscenter.org and from wndnewscenter.org.
The organization reports:
The fight at the University of California, Berkeley, is over ‘diversity statements’ that school officials used to ‘weed out candidates for faculty positions.’
The information is being released to FIRE more than two years after the case erupted.
The organization explained:
Many universities now require or invite current or prospective faculty to demonstrate their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion—often through written statements that factor into hiring, research, evaluation, promotion, or tenure decisions.
But, what has been revealed is:
[T]hose requirements can too easily function as ideological litmus tests and cast a pall of orthodoxy over campuses.
In fact, America’s universities are overwhelmingly leftist these days, with some faculties having only a single rare Republican aboard. Some apparently have none and the percentages of conservatives on faculties is consistently minuscule.
FIRE said in its report:
Berkeley is no exception.
The university expects all new faculty hires to ‘be committed to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging[.]’
During the 2018-19 academic year, Berkeley’s life sciences departments launched an initiative to advance faculty diversity. As part of the initiative, applicants for full-time faculty positions were required to submit statements on their ‘contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion,’ including information about their ‘understanding of these topics,’ ‘record of activities to date,’ and ‘specific plans and goals for advancing equity and inclusion.’
Those statements of belief, then, were used to eliminate candidates, and FIRE filed a public records request calling for release of that process.
Two years later, FIRE sent a demand letter threatening legal action if Berkeley didn’t comply, since state law requires those records to be made “promptly available.”
FIRE then learned:
[C]andidates who ‘discount the importance of diversity,’ or who don’t feel personally responsible for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion, received lower scores.
The report stated:
The five who were hired all ‘endorsed Berkeley’s … DEI initiatives.’
The report continued:
FIRE eventually expects to learn details of the use of required diversity statements in university hiring processes.
Meanwhile, nearly halfway across the country in San Antonio, Texas, St. Philip’s College received a letter from First Liberty on behalf of Johnson Varkey, a former adjunct professor, warning the college to resolve a fight outside of court after it fired the biology professor for teaching biology.
Otherwise, according to officials with First Liberty, they have the option, should the professor desire, to be “seeking redress in federal court” against the “responsible parties.”
What is demanded is the professor’s reinstatement to the San Antonio public community college, which:
[F]ired him for teaching standard principles
about human biology and reproduction.
Keisha Russell, counsel for First Liberty Institute, explained:
It is preposterous that, after teaching for more than 20 years, St. Philips would fire Dr. Varkey for teaching basic, widely accepted biology.
Dr. Varkey received exemplary performance reviews for twenty years, teaching fact-based, widely accepted science.
But now that cultural elites are at odds with these ideas, the school no longer supports professors who teach them.
The college violated Dr. Varkey’s constitutional and statutory rights when it fired him, and it must reinstate him immediately.
The legal team explained Varkey has taught Human Anatomy and Physiology to more than 1,500 students since 2003.
But recently he was accused, falsely according to his legal team:
[O]f religious preaching, discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric, and misogynistic banter.
Those claims are false, the legal team said, because he “never” has mentioned his religious beliefs in class.
Thus, the allegation that he conducted ‘religious preaching’ is unsubstantiated.
The letter seeks his reinstatement and more.
The fight erupted last November when Varkey’s students walked out of his class when he explained, consistent with science, that sex was determined by chromosomes X and Y.
The institute reported:
In two decades of teaching these basic, scientific concepts, no other students ever complained. But on January 27, 2023, Dr. Varkey received a Notice of Discipline and Termination of Employment and Contract letter stating that the school ‘received numerous complaints’ about the science he was teaching.
The letter accuses the school and its officials of violating the Free Speech Clause, the Free Exercise Clause, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act and more.
In fact, it explains he was teaching on a matter of public concern, with a clear academic purpose, using standard principles about human life, but was “stymied” in his efforts to support the free exchange of ideas.
The letter concluded:
Dr. Varkey is confident this matter can be resolved without resort to legal action. He asks that St. Philip’s College reinstate him to his prior position as adjunct professor so that he can resume teaching students this fall, and that other professors and employees of the Alamo Colleges District be spared from experiencing similar discrimination.
Otherwise, there is the option of “seeking redress in federal court.”
Final thoughts: I’m looking forward to the day when everything will finally be returned to pre-Kenyan-born, moslem-queer, ineligible-president, indicted-felon Barack Hussein Obama America which has been transitioned into a third-world sh*thole.
God speed to Conservatism and God speed to the Take Back of our Constitutional Republic.
