Free speech and the academy

A conservative Indiana University professor vilified for his views is fighting back, claiming he has not promoted the opinions attributed to him.

Eric Rasmusen is a rarity—a Christian and political conservative in academia who is public about views he believes are well-grounded in faith or common sense. The tenured business professor at the Bloomington, Ind., campus is under attack for tweets and comments he made on social media about homosexuality, women in academia, affirmative action, and race.

Controversy erupted when Rasmusen retweeted a link to an article published on Nov. 2 by The Unz Review titled “Are Women Destroying Academia? Probably.” He quoted from the article without comment: “Geniuses are overwhelmingly male because they combine outlier higher IQ with moderately low Agreeableness and moderately low Conscientiousness.”

After the tweet went viral, university administrators came down hard. Provost Lauren Robel condemned Rasmusen’s views in a statement released Nov. 20 accusing the Yale- and Massachusetts Institute of Technology–trained professor of employing “pernicious and false stereotypes.” Robel claimed that Rasmusen’s posts perpetuate ideas that women do not belong in the workplace, homosexual men should not be permitted in academia, and black students are inferior to white students and do not belong at elite schools.

“Not true,” Rasmusen wrote in a post on his website on Nov. 26, pointing to Robel’s failure to cite evidence for the claims she made. The post gives a point-by-point response to Robel’s claims, leading with, “I oppose admitting people to universities based on their race; I open doors for ladies; I say that sodomy is a sin.”

Rasmusen explained he opposes race-conscious affirmative action but not qualified African American students attending college. Nor does he oppose women in academia, he said, noting his wife used to teach at Eastern Illinois University. And while he objects to homosexuals as grade school teachers, Catholic priests, or Boy Scout leaders, he does not object to their work in academia.

Robel provided no evidence that Rasmusen has discriminated against students but said the university would provide alternative classes for students and make Rasmusen do “double-blind” grading so he would not know which exam belongs to which student.

That’s a mistake, wrote University of Chicago law professor Brian Leiter. “[Robel’s] job is not to attack members of her faculty, however stupid or foolish they may be; her job is to uphold the constitutional rights of faculty (which she professes she will do) and [ensure] compliance with anti-discrimination laws, among other tasks.”

Punishing Rasmusen by treating him differently from other professors, without evidence of wrongdoing, may also be unconstitutional. In 1992’s Levin v. Harleston, a federal appeals court ruled The City College of The City University of New York violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by setting up shadow classes for a professor whose extracurricular writings were said to denigrate African Americans when there was no evidence that the professor’s views affected educational objectives.

None of the pushback has been easy on Rasmusen. In addition to responding to administrators, he said he has had to deal with a rash of tweets and emails—many supportive, some insulting.

“For my family, it was tense and challenging but also a God-given opportunity to pray together and learn to rely on the Lord more deeply,” Rasmusen said. “As my wife told me today, fear of man is not the way to live.”