I was asked to provide my opinion about this situation. And my opinion is that Marquette absolutely did the correct thing.
On Thursday, university officials announced that they withdrew an offer to Seattle University professor Jodi O’Brien to serve as the dean of Marquette’s College of Arts and Sciences. The university said in a statement that O’Brien “was not the person who could best fill this very important position”and that the school had made “oversights” in their search process. According to the Associated Press, O’Brien’s scholastic writings include sociological studies that detail lesbian sexual activity.
The professor expressed her disappointment to the AP in a recent email.“At this time the only comment I can offer is to confirm that I was offered the position of Dean and I accepted it, but there was an intercession by the President before my appointment was announced officially,” O’Brien wrote. “I’m very disappointed. The College of A&S at Marquette is strong and vibrant and I was looking forward to working with the students and faculty there.”
Several faculty members and students protested the decision, claiming that O’brien’s sexual orientation was the reason the university decided to rescind the offer.
First, the university’s reason for rescinding its job offer to the woman is totally irrelevant. The Constitutionally protected right to free association means that the university is free to employ or not employ anyone, for any reason. While it’s true that this right has been massively and persistently violated for decades under the dishonest facade of “civil rights”, discrimination is, in fact, still practiced at every American university. The only difference between the past and present is the targets of that discrimination.
Second, academia would not be in the dire straits in which it finds itself now, a ludicrous and increasingly irrelevant joke to the genuine intellectuals of the world, if more of the Christians who founded most of the world’s great universities had not fallen for the lie “academic freedom”. “Academic freedom” is a transparent fraud; it is the university version of the dictator’s democratic mantra: one man, one vote, one time.