Today, Alliance Defending Freedom is launching a new tool with important information and up to date information about your rights on campus. The Speak Up University Newsletter will cover a range of topics relevant to college students and their parents, as well as faculty and staff, keeping you informed about your constitutional right to Speak Up.
Take a look at the first newsletter here, and sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each month.
Illegal discrimination against Christians on public university campuses is pervasive and must be confronted. The Constitution has something to say about this—and so should you. Speak Up
The double standard for student speech is playing out again at UC Davis. The Sacramento Bee reports that Occupy UC Davis has moved its operations from “a tent encampment” (seriously, who likes camping for months on end?) to the vacant Cross Cultural Center on campus, and plan to occupy it permanently. In response, the UC Davis sent in campus police and arrested the students for trespassing, right? Wrong. The Bee reports:
Campus officials are taking a wait-and-see approach.
“We’ll be monitoring it and making decision based on the overall best interest of the university,” said Claudia Morain, a spokeswoman for the university.
If this had been a Christian or pro-life student group, you can be sure that campus police would have moved in immediately. Universities barely let Christian and pro-life students hold signs or hand out leaflets on campus without threatening arrest, let alone occupy an entire building.
Maybe one day campus administrators will wait-and-see that Christian and pro-life speech isn’t so bad after all.
Katherine Kersten has written a provocative essay about the intense bias against hiring conservative and pro-life professors as college and university professors. She focuses on the case against the University of Iowa Law School involved Teresa Wagner, a qualified individual who sought to teach at the school that had a lopsided ratio of only one registered Republican among the 50 faculty members. The law school refused to hire Ms. Wagner, in spite of her obvious qualification for the job. Why would the law school reject a qualified candidate? Because she was conservative and pro-life. Kersten writes, ”Wagner had committed one unforgivable sin: She is pro-life, and actually once worked for the National Right to Life Committee in Washington, D.C.” The University of Iowa instead chose a candidate right out of law school rather than add another conservative to its faculty.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in its recent ruling in favor of Ms. Wagner, stating that her lawsuit could proceed to trial on her claims that the University of Iowa violated the First Amendment by refusing to hire her. The Eighth Circuit’s opinion states: ”No more direct assault on academic freedom can be imagined than for the school authorities to [refuse to hire] a teacher because of his or her philosophical, political, or ideological beliefs.”
Wagner’s lawyer, quoted in a New York Times article, said “It’s gotten to the point where the law school’s diversity efforts are to eliminate everyone from the mainstream,” he said. “They espouse cultural diversity, but won’t consider the conservative viewpoint.”
The ADF Center for Academic Freedom has been fighting for academic freedom for conservative, Christian and pro-life faculty members who are frequently denied hiring and tenure because of their beliefs in such cases as Mike Adams’ lawsuit against the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.
If you have been censored or punished because of your faith give us a call at 1-800-TellADF or Tell us your story of injustice. We are here for you!
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Speak Up for LIFE! Envision… a World Without Abortion! RSVP to watch the nation’s largest pro-life conference LIVE online on 1/22/2012 at http://adf.am/SFLArsvp
ADF Senior Vice President; Senior Counsel - University Project
The 2012 Students for Life National Pro-Life Conference is little more than a week away, and ADF is excited to once again partner with Students for Life to hold the biggest pro-life student conference anywhere. I went for the first time last year, and I was blown away by the quality of the speakers and their presentations. Those attending will learn from many experienced experts about many aspects of the pro-life movement. Dr. John Bruchalski is one I am looking forward to hearing from. Former Governor Mike Huckabee will speak and introduce a new movie, called ”The Gift of Life.”
Also, I found the mere fact that so many pro-life young people are gathered in one place to be one of the most encouraging things I saw last year at the conference. We are not alone, and everyone draws energy and encouragement from the fact that there are so many of us working together for life.
And they served great pizza, too. Pizza and pro-lifers – who could ask for anything more! See you Sunday!
ADF Senior Vice President; Senior Counsel - University Project
For all the pro-life student activists out there participating in today’s Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity with the unborn: Take heart. You’re winning.
Why do I say this? We are constantly reminded that Roe v. Wade is still “the law of the land.” I know that Planned Parenthood still receives over three hundred and sixty million dollars of taxpayer funding annually – over 1/3 of its budget. I know that Planned Parenthood and its allies are aborting babies at such a rate that over 1.2 million children in the U.S. alone will be denied life this year because of their work. So how can I claim that you are winning the war when it seems that you’re charging up such a steep hill?
This. 
Listen as the Planned Parenthood representatives struggle to wrap their arms around scientific ignorance. This is all they have. Faced with a growing scientific understanding of how life develops in the womb, all they can do is fall back on the postmodern game of elevating personal feeling over facts.
Here are a few choice quotes:
“Science cannot be applied to my body.” (I generally hope that my doctor is applying science to my body.)
“Science is not ultimate truth. That’s why it’s science.” (I agree that there is a real ultimate Truth, but I’m not sure that’s what she meant – especially because I don’t think it would help her argument.)
“The living breathing sentient being that has control over her body is the one we listen to, not science.” (So people who lack control over their bodies are not worthy of life?)
“Their (pro-lifers) researchers say that the heart beats in 21 days. There’s people on our side and research that says that the heart doesn’t beat until 24 weeks.” (The Mayo Clinic says “Just four weeks after conception … your baby’s heart is pumping blood.” And I’ve listened to my own childrens’ heartbeats earlier than 24 weeks.)
“We need to focus on the birth control issue rather than the photos or scientific evidence that [the pro-life speaker] just gave you.” (When I hear him say this I hear this).
“Anyone who is born with an x and a y chromosome is biologically female.” (Perhaps this came from the same doctor who says that the heart only begins to beat at 24 weeks?)
But it’s not just these Planned Parenthood representatives that have such a difficult time battling science. Pro-abortion elected officials also must work very hard to ensure that they don’t let facts get in the way of their ideology. Listen as Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee describes an unborn child’s heartbeat as “sounds that might discourage this needed action” in the recent House debate on the Protect Life Act.
So, to sum up the pro-abortion mentality: What is that thing in a woman’s body? We know it was placed there because of the actions of two people and when it comes out it certainly seems to be a person. But there just is no settled scientific answer as to what that thing is. It’s a riddle wrapped inside an enigma really. Science can never tell us what it is so we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Of course, the temperature trends of the Earth over the past several millennia and the factors that cause their change is such settled scientific fact that merely to type this very sentence implicitly questioning this overwhelming scientific consensus might be an act of planetary treason.
When the pro-abortion lobby is reduced to pleading with us to ignore the facts and inventing fake science (24 weeks?!) to defend their ideological commitments to ending unborn lives (which happens to be very profitable) they’re on the ropes.
Take heart. And don’t grow weary in doing good.
