Today’s academic institutions are shutting out competing worldviews. Professors who question evolution will not receive tenure and will most likely be dismissed. Don’t even think about getting hired if you oppose abortion and don’t bow before the altar of sexual and gender dysmorphia.
Senate Democrats are opposing lawyers who are up for judicial posts if they are not pro-abortion and gender-diverse friendly. Decades ago Leftists appealed to free speech and tolerance to gain a seat at the academic table. Once there, they shut the door behind them. “Toleration” is now a form of hate speech.
The latest example is from Yale Law School.
After the Yale Federalist Society invited an attorney from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a prominent Christian legal group, to speak about the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, conservative students faced backlash. Outlaws, the law school’s LGBTQ group, demanded that Yale Law School “clarify” its admissions policies for students who support ADF’s positions. Additionally, Outlaws insisted that students who work for religious or conservative public interest organizations such as ADF during their summers should not receive financial support from the law school. (The Federalist)
As expected, Yale Law School officials capitulated. “The school will no longer provide financial support for students and graduates who work at organizations that discriminate on the basis of “sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.”
This type of viewpoint discrimination has been going on for a long time. In Scott Greer’s book No Campus for White Men: The Transformation of Higher Education Into Hateful Indoctrination, we get an introduction to what has happened to today’s college campuses, and it’s downright depressing:
American universities were once the cultivators of the nation’s brightest minds, the gateway to the middle class, and forums for the exchange of ideas and innovations.
Now they can’t tolerate chalk marks in support of a certain Republican presidential candidate. In March 2016, students at Emory University found themselves the victims of “chalkings” proclaiming the oh-so horrifying slogan “Trump 2016.” This unbearable sight caused some at the Atlanta-based school to fret for their safety and condemn the chalky political speech as a form of racial intimidation.
Because these students felt so threatened by fairly tame political speech, they demanded their university president condemn the act in the strongest terms possible.
And, of course, he did.
There is no doubt that the gospel message is contentious. Christians around the world are dying every day because of it. Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world. Jesus told His disciples that they would undergo tribulation. The early church did as the death of Stephen (Acts 7:54-60) and James the brother of John (12:2) remind us as well as the tribulation that Paul went through (2 Cor. 11:24-27; 2 Tim. 3:10-12).
“Nearly one Christian is killed every hour around the world for practicing their faith, said the Archbishop of the U.S. capital…. ‘Reports suggest that about 200 million Christians around the world are at risk of physical violence, arrest, torture, even death simply because they live and practice a faith that is not acceptable to the rulers in that part of the world.’” (Breitbart)
Once Christian institutions like Harvard and Yale have been taken over by an anti-Christian mob. These schools owe their origin to Christians:
Harvard 1636: “Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let everyone seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him (Prov. 2:3).” ((From Harvard’s “Rules and Precepts,” adopted in 1646.))
Harvard’s original seal read: “Truth for Christ and the Church.”
Yale (1701): “All scholars shall live religious, godly, and blameless lives according to the rules of God’s Word, diligently reading the Holy Scriptures, the fountain of light and truth; and constantly attend upon all the duties of religion, both in public and secret.”
Notice that Yale’s original “rules” were based on “God’s Word” where same-sex sexually is explicitly forbidden in both the Old and New Testaments.
“Yale’s original motto, written in Hebrew (אורים ותמים) and Latin (Lux et Veritas) is “Light and Truth.” The open book in the middle of the seal is the Bible.
The Latin word Veritas – “Truth” – is common to both seals. It’s a shame that most of today’s colleges and universities despise it and will do almost anything to suppress it.
It’s gotten so bad that “The idea that there is a single truth – ’the Truth’ – is a construct of the Euro-West that is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment. . . " Given this operating premise, is the claim that there is no “the Truth” true?
For years Christian academicians were told that they could not compete for jobs in prestige universities and colleges because they did not hold the necessary academic credentials from the “right” schools. A doctorate from an academically rigorous religious institution, if it was conservative, was not good enough. Scholarly wannabes had to jump through liberal academic hoops. But once through, so the theory goes, these sanctioned scholars would be accepted with open arms at any institution.
Well, something happened on the way to academic nirvana. It seems that there was just one more hoop to jump through. Religious persons must not bring their religious viewpoints into the classroom no matter what their academic credentials. “To do so,” history professor George Marsden was told, “would be to transgress the standards of scientific detachment necessary for the proper study of religion.”
As you might imagine, this “rule” is not applied consistently by the academic establishment. Certainly, feminists are permitted to teach from a feminist viewpoint. The same is true of Marxists and anarchists. Let’s not forget the LGBTQ+ crowd.
Dr. Marsden wanted the anti-Christian establishment to allow Christians to enter its domain. Why should they? Why should the humanists permit people to come in, sanctioned by the institution, credentialed with the PhD, to subvert their humanist agenda?
But what of all this talk about “pluralism,” “multiculturalism,” and “diversity”? Do not these liberal shibboleths mean that everyone is welcomed to academia? Isn’t the academic public square opened to all opinions? Don’t you believe it.
These politically correct signs are marked as one-way streets designed to keep conservatives out of liberal institutions. Conservatives, believing that they are not “diverse” enough and wanting to show how “tolerant” they are, make room for the apostates. And we wonder why we lost Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
This all goes to show that the humanists are wiser than many Christians. The Bible tells us as much: “For the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light” (Luke 16:8). Humanist institutions, for the most part, retain their humanist worldview by hiring humanists and prohibiting Christians from teaching from a Christian perspective. Who can blame them! Many Christian institutions open their doors to humanists and allow them to corrupt their own. The left is only doing what Christians should have been doing. How long will it take before we get it?