Years ago, Abigail Thernstrom described universities as “islands of repression in a sea of freedom.”  More recently, several columnists have highlighted how the effort to indoctrinate students pervades virtually every aspect of campus life.

Last month, George Will’s Washington Post column outlined how campus speech codes actually train students to support censorship.  In so doing, universities stifle the robust debate and exchange of ideas they claim to support.  And because these speech codes affect every aspect of student life—from the classroom to the dorm room—they are a particularly pernicious method for suppressing unpopular ideas.

Just today, Thomas Sowell’s column, The Role of ‘Educators,’ highlights how this indoctrination occurs in the classroom.  After all, far too many professors see them­selves as “agent[s] of change” who are “strategically placed, with an opportunity to condition students to want a different kind of society.”  Of course, some openly ad­mit this.  For example, Richard Rorty—a long-time philosophy professor—explained that he “like most Americans who teach humanities or social science in colleges and universities . . . try to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homo­phobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own.”  He even warned parents that he and his colleagues “are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist re­ligious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than dis­cussable.”  As Sowell notes, having discarded the job of teaching people how to think, these professors seek to undermine the values that made America great.

Last week, Jeremy Tedesco’s column at Townhall.com trumpeted Julea Ward’s victory against indoctrination efforts cloaked as practicum assignments.  After she took an unpopular stand for years, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed her conviction that she should not be forced to endorse behavior she considered immoral by ruling that public universities “cannot compel students to alter or violate their beliefs . . . as the price for obtaining a degree.”  This is a tremendous victory for religious freedom, one that will benefit students far beyond just Eastern Michigan University.

Last month, Mike Adams critiqued the Supreme Court’s unfortunate ruling in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, which extends indoctrination efforts into the extracurricular arena.  In Cleaning Up After Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mike highlights some of the flaws of the decision, but he also describes how his university has stretched Martinez to violate the freedoms of religious and political student groups.  In A Queer Need for Rejection, he explains how Martinez exposes some student groups—such as a Christian group that expects its leaders to live by Biblical principles—to harassment and the constant threat of discrimination charges.

Of course, if you have experienced any of these avenues of indoctrination, please contact us.  Your rights may well have been violated, and you may be in a position to secure not only your own freedoms but—like Julea Ward—those of countless others as well. 

We have a lot to be thankful for this year at Alliance Defending Freedom as our clients prevailed time and again in cases across the country.  Here’s a recap of the top university victories in 2012:

Julea Ward – As Jeremy wrote recently, Julea Ward scored a big victory when she settled her case against Eastern Michigan University.  Her case shows that the freedom to believe is still a critical component of our constitutional liberties.  As Jeremy said, the appellate court ruling in her favor “will have a lasting impact on the right of college students to live out their lives according to the dictates of their faith.  It clearly sets out that public universities ‘cannot compel students to alter or violate their belief systems . . . as the price for obtaining a degree,’ which is precisely what EMU was demanding Julea do.”

OSU Student Alliance – The Ninth Circuit handed down a resounding victory for independent student press on college campuses in OSU Student Alliance v. Ray.  Public universities cannot relegate these papers to second-class status and expect to get away with it.  This case will continue in 2013, so watch for updates.

Bronx Household of Faith – While not technically a university case, several Alliance Defending Freedom university lawyers are working on this case to protect equal access to government facilities.  New York City has a no-worship policy that it is trying to use to block a church from renting its facilities after school hours, like all other community groups can.  A federal district court struck down the policy in June, finding that it violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.  This case is more than a decade old and was recently argued to the federal appellate court in New York City, so stay tuned for what happens next.

Florida Christian College – Just last month, Florida Christian College settled its suit against the State of Florida over a tuition grant program.  The state refused to allow FCC students to participate in the tuition grant because the state viewed FCC as “non-secular” and “too religious.”  In other word, FCC students lost out on the tuition assistance, while everyone else did not.  That is no longer the case.

Texas Aggie Conservatives – A group of conservative students at Texas A&M University thought it was unfair that they could not access student organization funding simply because they were part of a political group, but virtually all other student groups could access those funds.  They sued A&M and got the university to remove its discriminatory ban on funding religious and political student groups.

Young Americans for Freedom – Another group of conservative students, this time in Florida, were restricted from distributing flyers on campus.  They successfully settled their case this year, which enabled spontaneous student speech, removed speech zones on campus, and limited a college speech code.

Nationwide Letter Campaign – We also sent letters to over a hundred public universities from coast to coast detailing unconstitutional speech policies on their campuses.  As of today, we received 27 favorable responses indicating that those universities revised their policies to protect student speech.

Aside from these critical wins, we were successful countless other times in situations you may never hear about.  But those victories were just as critical for preserving the religious liberty of the individuals involved in them, and for that we are thankful.

We hope and pray that 2013 brings more victories for student speech on campus.

Alliance Defending Freedom recently settled the lawsuit it brought on behalf of Julea Ward against Eastern Michigan University.  EMU expelled Julea–a stellar student with a 3.91 GPA who was nearly done with the program–for merely inquiring whether she should refer a client with whom she had a values conflict.  The conflict arose because the client sought counseling about a sexual relationship that conflicted with her sincere religious convictions.  As part of the settlement, the University agreed to pay Julea $75,000 and remove the expulsion from her student record.

The settlement is a great victory for Julea, as was the Sixth Circuit’s earlier ruling in her case, in which it unanimously reversed a lower court order dismissing her lawsuit altogether.

The Sixth Circuit’s ruling, which came down in January 2012, will have a lasting impact on the right of college students to live out their lives according to the dictates of their faith.  It clearly sets out that public universities “cannot compel students to alter or violate their belief systems . . . as the price for obtaining a degree,” which is precisely what EMU was demanding Julea do.  Among other things, the university told Julea at her final disciplinary hearing that the “remediation” plan she had to complete to remain in the program was aimed at changing her “belief system.”

The Court also established that public universities must apply their policies in a “faith-neutral” manner, and are forbidden from granting ”secular exemptions but not religious ones.”  Establishing this principle is especially important in the public university context, where Christian students are all too often singled out and punished for expressing or standing up for their faith.

Finally, the Sixth Circuit also highlighted the hypocrisy of public universities when they invoke ”tolerance” and “diversity” to explain their punishment of students like Julea Ward.  ”Tolerance,” the Court admonished “is a two-way street.”  But like EMU, universities all too often invoke policies regarding “tolerance,” “diversity,” or nondiscrimination, as the Court put it, to “mandate[] orthodoxy, not anti-discrimination.”  The Sixth Circuit is right, public universities must respect the beliefs and views of all their students, rather than favoring those with politically correct views and punishing the non-conformists.  As Julea’s case shows, to do otherwise could land universities in federal court.

Admittedly, this blog does not regularly spotlight parenting advice, but in an article highlighted by Tim Challies, Adam Griffin poses a question that all Christians should ask themselves.  And it bears directly on how Christian students and professors should conduct themselves on campus.

In this article, Adam ponders what kind of man his now one-year-old son will become.  In the process, he compares his desire for his son to be highly esteemed with what Scriptures like John 15:19 say will happen to those who follow Jesus faithfully:

Reading this, I realized that if God answers my prayer for my son to be a follower of Christ, people will hate him.  People will absolutely, unquestionably be repulsed by my son.

If God graciously saves my Oscar, people will call him a bigot and a homophobe.  Some will ridicule him as a male chauvinist as they scorn his “sexist” beliefs.  He’ll be despised as closed-minded for saying that Jesus Christ is not only God but the only God.  He will probably meet a girl who insults his manhood or considers him old fashioned for waiting until marriage to have sex.  His peers will think him a prude.  Bullies will call him a coward.  His integrity will draw insults like “goody two shoes” (I don’t even know what that means).

Teachers will think that that my son ignores scientific theories about our origins, prompting his classmates to mark him an idiot.  People will tell him he has been led astray by his parents down an ancient path of misguided morality masked as a relationship with God.  Financial advisors will think he’s irresponsibly generous.  When he takes a stand, there will be those who will not tolerate his intolerance.  He will be judged as judgmental.  He will have enemies, and I’ll be asking him to love them, and even for that he’ll look foolish.

And he observes that “[r]aising kids who are ready to be hated means raising kids who unashamedly love God even in the face of loathing and alienation.”

Clearly, as Christians, we are not just called to hold Biblical positions, but also to do so in a way that is polite, winsome, and above reproach.  But the Gospel and all of Scripture include an inherent offense that can never be removed.  No matter how nice we are, the truths of the Bible will offend others.  And this offense is what we and our children must be prepared to endure.

Nowhere do Adam’s observations play out more vividly than at universities, where those who vocally advocate, defend, and try to live out Biblical truth will be hated.  This is true for students, who can get vilified for criticizing vulgarity, labeled “racist” for defending life, expelled as “homophobic” for declining to endorse immorality, and cursed out for defending marriage.  But it is also true for professors, who can get passed over for promotion or even face accusations of unethical conduct if they defend unpopular or unfashionable truths.

Thankfully, our Constitution offers students and professors protection, and God has graciously blessed those referenced above with victory.  Of course, Alliance Defending Freedom remains willing and ready to stand with others who face similar persecution for faithfully following Christ.  But all of the protections our Constitution affords and all of the lawyers ready to spring into action are completely worthless unless the student or professor is first willing to be hated.

So if you are a Christian who happens to be a university student or professor, Adam’s parenting article raises two questions to ponder prayerfully:

Does your university hate you?

If not, why not?

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Peter Berkowitz, a political scientist at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, points out that our public universities are being politicized, and dominated by left-leaning professors and administrators. As proof, he notes that last year the American Association of University Professors officially endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement. Certainly the Occupy movement was significant and should be addressed in courses on political and social science, but to endorse it outright is indicative of the type of liberal bias that is so prevalent in our universities today.

We at ADF are contacted on a regular basis by college students who are vilified, disciplined, and sometimes even removed from a course of study because they espouse pro-life or pro-family views. Just this week, a student from a university in North Carolina reported on our Facebook page that her campus speech was censored because it encouraged students to vote for Amendment One, which would preserve marriage as between one man and one woman in North Carolina. Her plight is just the tip of the iceberg. Students like Julea Ward at Eastern Michigan University are being forced out of their chosen field of study because they dare to believe and speak out on what the Bible has to say about sexual immorality. And religious student groups that have the audacity to require their leaders to actually believe the religious principles the group stands for are being thrown off public and even private campuses like Vanderbilt that were founded on religious principles.

As a Christian father of two teens that will be heading off to college in the next few years, this is particularly concerning to me. Especially since it’s recently been widely reported that almost half of students lose their faith when they go away to school. The answer is students have to be willing to stand for what they believe in – even in the face of opposition from overbearing professors, and pressure from their classmates. And we as parents, youth leaders, and pastors must work to prepare students for the trial of their faith we all know is coming. Merely believing because your parents believe no longer cuts it at college. Students and their leaders must do the hard work of studying the Bible to understand what they believe and why.

The good news is, we at ADF have the back of students when they do take a stand. For instance, we recently successfully defended Julea Ward in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court recognized that she had a valid claim that the university had wrongly discriminated against her because of her religious beliefs.

If you or someone you know is experiencing discrimination on campus, contact us today at telladf.org/university or 1-800-TELL ADF.