Time for leadership at OU
By Jonathan Small
Oklahoma faces workforce challenges. Our college system should play a crucial role in addressing that challenge and fueling economic growth.
Instead, the University of Oklahoma is receiving national attention for devolving into academic self-parody.
Rather than gain renown for producing engineers and scientists, OU is under scrutiny for having a man who identifies as a woman teach students about psychology. And that instructor is under fire for alleged religious discrimination against a Christian student who believes, accurately, that there are only two sexes.
Students in a psychology class taught by graduate assistant Mel Curth, who is reportedly transgender-identifying, were assigned to read an article claiming gender-atypical kids experience more teasing, leading to negative mental health outcomes. Then students were asked to write a “reaction paper.” Among the “possible approaches” suggested was to explain why a student thought the subject of the article was, or was not, worthy of study or to explain how the study applied to a student’s own experiences.
The assignment was not a research paper requiring citation of outside sources.
OU junior Samantha Fulnecky wrote, among other things, “I personally believe that eliminating gender in our society would be detrimental, as it pulls us farther from God’s original plan for humans.” She also wrote that she strongly disagreed with the idea “that encouraging acceptance of diverse gender expressions could improve students’ confidence. Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth.”
Fulnecky was given a zero. Curth responded that “this isn’t a vague narrative of ‘society pushes lies,’ but instead the result of countless years developing psychological and scientific evidence for these claims. ... You may personally disagree with this, but that doesn’t change the fact that every major psychological, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric association in the United States acknowledges that, biologically and psychologically, sex and gender is neither binary nor fixed.”
In short, Fulnecky was punished for expressing widely held views based in part on her religious beliefs.
Fulnecky has filed an appeal. OU has placed Curth on leave during the investigation.
OU’s board of regents should follow the lead of OU Coach Brent Venables, who takes a hands-on approach to defense and has generated one of the best football defenses nationwide. The regents clearly need to get more involved in all hiring and personnel-accountability decisions. This is not a time to sit on the sidelines. The school’s national reputation–and its ability to remain an asset to taxpayers–is on the line.
Decades ago, then-OU President George L. Cross defended a budget request with the quip, “We want to build a university our football team can be proud of.” That remains a goal OU officials must strive to reach.
Jonathan Small serves as president of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.
I think one of the issues is that Psychology as a field, is not science. There are no biological tests to administer to determine if someone has multiple personalities or is faking it for attention or escaping consequences of a crime. Such degrees were classified as part of Arts and Humanities and not science for good reason.
ReplyDeleteAlmost all of the conclusions they come to are based on consensus. The left loves that word, as if consensus somehow is synonymous with reality. If the consensus were based on hard scientific testing, that would great. They use the consensus word to promote their immorality wrapped in a neat package of modernity.
One of the other unmentioned views on Psychology is that it lacks are form of condemnation. People with sexual deviancies are not in anyway condemned but are instead written about and cited as sources for future students to review. They in effect, use circular reasoning and indoctrination to not only justify their positions but to influence young minds studying the field.
It's also common for people with mental problems to gravitate towards such fields. We could say misery loves company or work avoidance by people who don't really want to commit to a real degree. In either event, we should strongly discourage our children from going into such fields and ridicule those who pursue them. Starving these departments of funding is probably going to do more than an average politician writing a bill to punish academic sourced discrimination.