Religion & Law

As Michael P. reports, critics of Marquette?s decision to rescind the offer to Prof. O?Brien claim that the decision ?puts academic freedom at risk at Marquette University.?  They ?reject an intellectual ?litmus test? for our faculty, staff, and leaders in the administration.?  This high-minded appeal to ?academic freedom? strikes me as disingenuous.  I suspect that the critics are driven by ideology rather than principles of academic freedom. 

If an offer had been extended by Marquette to someone whose academic career centered seriously but mistakenly around the notion (a) that the poor across the globe are largely responsible for their own impoverishment and that, therefore, the preferential option for the poor is not only mistaken but positively harmful or (b) that women are inferior in some way to men, I suspect that these same individuals would be calling for the university president?s head.  These may be inadequate examples, but I think the point is clear.  A Catholic university ? like any university - ought to have the institutional academic freedom to form its own identity within which individual academic freedom can flourish.  And, I suspect that these critics don?t disagree with this notion.  Rather they disagree with its application in this particular case because they wish that the Catholic Church taught something different than what it does on matters of human sexuality.