It is actually quite amazing that conservatives, libertarians, and Christians perform as well as they do in American politics. After all, the Left dominates entertainment, the media, and academia. A recently filed lawsuit in Oklahoma illustrates the chokehold that progressives have (and why they have) on institutions of higher learning in the United States.
Whitney Bailey has been an associate professor at the College of Human Sciences at Oklahoma State University, and in 2017, she took an unpaid leave of absence to accept an appointment at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from incoming President Donald Trump. Bailey is a 45-year-old Republican who said in the filing that she told her administrators in 2016 there was a likelihood that the incoming Trump administration could ask her to take a temporary job with the new president.
Now she is alleging in her lawsuit that Democrats at OSU denied her a promotion because of her political beliefs. All the defendants are registered Democrats who have been “highly critical of the Trump Administration in general, those who voted for President Trump in 2016 and those who appear inclined to vote for President Trump again in 2020,” according to the lawsuit filing.
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In the lawsuit filing, Bailey’s attorneys, Stan Ward and Geoffrey A. Tabor, argued, “Plaintiff’s employment with OSU did not and does not require political allegiance. Defendants’ unlawful conduct was motivated by evil motive or intent and involved reckless or callous indifference to Plaintiff’s federally protected rights.”
Among the evidence cited in the filing against OSU is that after Trump won in 2016, “OSU’s administration offered counseling assistance to its employees who were having difficulty dealing with Trump’s election.” In other words, since OSU is a tax-supported institution, taxpayers — including those who voted for Trump — would be paying for counseling to those who take one side in a political campaign.
Among those targeted in the lawsuit include OSU Provost Gary Sandefur; Stephen Wilson, dean of the College of Human Sciences; and Jorge Tiles, an associate dean.
The university responded that it would provide legal support for the defendants. “OSU is obligated to assist with the legal defense of claims made against its employees acting within the course and scope of their employment. Because this is a legal matter, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
Oklahoma has been a solidly red state in presidential elections for many years. Other than the 1964 election, when Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater in the state, no Democrat has managed to carry the state since Harry Truman in 1948. In fact, no Democrat has even been able to carry one of Oklahoma’s 77 counties since 2000.
While Trump was running up huge margins in most Oklahoma counties, he was held to 60 percent of the vote in Payne County — the home of Oklahoma State University. OSU in Stillwater, Oklahoma, has a reputation as a more conservative alternative than its sister institution in Norman, the University of Oklahoma. But that is all relative. During the tenure of OU President David Boren, a former Democrat U.S. senator with strong ties to the U.S. intelligence community, OU has veered sharply leftward. Boren, who recently retired, often had liberal associates, such as former CIA Director John Brennan, speak on campus, and Boren was very vocal in his support of President Barack Obama.
Boren vowed to stay out of politics when he took the job as president of OU in 1994, but he did not.
If OU and OSU can be islands of blue in a sea of red in a state such as Oklahoma, what is the situation with other American colleges and universities? It is probably worse.
The case of Bailey at OSU illustrates the problem. Professors who do not toe the liberal — and even openly left-wing line — will find themselves either fired, denied promotion, or see their assignments and contact with students drastically reduced. That is for those who even manage to get advanced degrees and get hired to teach in the first place. Conservative-leaning students who seek positions in higher education must either lie about their political and religious views, or somehow keep such views hidden.
This produces an academic environment on almost all of America’s college campuses that is hostile to conservative, libertarian, and Christian positions and individuals. Studies indicate that the best field for conservatives, libertarians, and Christians is philosophy (because as the Apostle Paul found out in Athens, philosophers like to hear new ideas). In most other fields, such as history, sociology, political science, and even business, instructors quickly learn that one should not express conservative views above a whisper, if that.
One would think that a broad range of views should be welcomed in academic environments. After all, this was a foundational principle in the creation of the university system in the Middle Ages by the Catholic Church. As historian Thomas Woods writes in his book How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, “Among the most important medieval contributions to modern science was the essentially free inquiry of the university system, where scholars could debate and discuss propositions.”
This spirit is absent on most college campuses today — not just at Oklahoma State. While liberals praise diversity, they most certainly do not mean tolerance for conservative or Christian scholarship. On the contrary, such views are often castigated as “hate speech.” By diversity, liberals mean a liberal white guy, a liberal white woman, a liberal black man, a liberal Hispanic, a liberal Asian, and so forth.
As is the case with Professor Bailey at OSU, if you support President Donald Trump, you need to seek employment elsewhere.
Image: Screenshot of go.okstate.edu
Steve Byas is the author of History’s Greatest Libels, and he may be contacted at [email protected].
