Free speech and other myths

I just heard about another battle in the ongoing war over free speech on the college campus. Being a teacher myself, I cringe when I hear of schools, in the name of political correctness, shutting off any speech which they find “offensive.”

In this case, which happened last year, a San Jose City College biology professor was fired for answering a student's question on the relationship between homosexuality and heredity. In class one day, a student asked what makes someone attracted to a member of the same sex. She referred to the textbook and said there were several ideas, but she discussed one which indicated the role of maternal stress and homosexual behavior in males. She then said the class would learn in a later chapter of the textbook that homosexual behavior may be influenced by both genes and the environment.

Of course, you can guess the next step. She was accused by a student of giving the class statements which were "offensive and unscientific." Let’s see . . . the statements came from the textbook. This is “unscientific”? The instructor was later terminated by the district's board of trustees.

Here’s where the plot thickens. She contacted the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal alliance set up to defend our Constitutional rights, which has sued the district on her behalf. It should be interesting to see how the court rules.

I hope you consider helping the ADF. It’s a quality group that needs to exist and to prosper in our upside-down world of American education. Something else you might like to see is a website called noindoctrination.org, which lets college students list examples of their free speech rights being violated by propagandizing instructors.