A judge in Arizona’s most populous county has ruled that a conservative professor’s lawsuit challenging Arizona State University’s “Inclusive Communities” faculty training may proceed. The University has responded by filing a motion to stay the ruling with the Arizona Court of Appeals.
Owen Anderson, a conservative Christian professor, filed the lawsuit on March 19, 2024, contending that the university’s mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion training for faculty violates a 2022 law passed by the Arizona legislature. That law bars state agencies — including public universities — from requiring employees to participate in training “that presents any form of blame or judgment on the basis of race, ethnicity or sex.”
In response, the Arizona Board of Regents argued in its legal briefs that the training is not mandatory and does not put blame on white males. But Professor Anderson took screenshots showing that the training is mandatory and was described as such, and embedded with notions such as white privilege.
In a court brief, ASU claims the training does not run violate state law, because “employees are encouraged to discuss and openly question the concepts and ideas contained within” and are permitted to take issue with them. College officials claim in declarations that the training is not mandatory, that it is merely a “request” and that “ASU has not disciplined any faculty, staff, or other employee (including Anderson) for failing to view or complete any aspect of the Inclusive Communities training.”
Around Christmas, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian denied a motion to dismiss the case, according to the Phoenix New Times.
Stacy Skankey, a lawyer at the Goldwater Institute, which represents Anderson, says the “court’s decision rejecting ASU’s attempt to dismiss the case affirms the importance of holding public institutions accountable for policies that violate constitutional rights…. This is a crucial step forward in our fight against ASU’s discriminatory DEI regime and vindicating Owen Anderson’s rights. We may now proceed with our case to ensure that all ASU faculty and staff are free from mandatory taxpayer-funded trainings that impose ideological conformity.”
She panned the Arizona Board of Regents’ decision to appeal the decision. “ABOR’s motion to stay is improper at this time. This looks like a delay to avoid the discovery phase of litigation and deprives Professor Anderson of additional information about the Inclusive Communities training that he is entitled to. We intend to oppose the motion and move this case forward.”
Skankey says ASU’s training would require Professor Anderson to concur that white heterosexuals are inherently racist. The “Inclusive Communities” module includes an exam at its concusion, with “correct” answers that Anderson disagrees with based on his bedrock beliefs.
In its court filing answering Anderson’s complaint, the Board of Regents claims ASU’s goal is to promote a welcoming environment for students of diverse backgrounds, claiming “the training’s very purpose is for the university community to be more welcoming, not to make anyone feel unwelcome as a result of who they are or what they believe.”
“The lawsuit filed by the Goldwater Institute is false and without merit,” says an ASU spokesperson. “ASU trains all faculty on its charter commitment to inclusiveness and the success of students from all walks of life. The Goldwater Institute suit misleads the court and misrepresents both the content and requirements of this training to make an argument that represents a political perspective but is not based on the law.”
To try to moot Professor Anderson’s lawsuit, ASU has modified the Inclusive Communities training to no longer contain an exam, and merely ask employees to confirm their review of the required materials in each section. It also denies in its answer filed in court that any of the exam answers are “correct” in any sense other than what most closely reflects what is argued in the training material.
In September 2023, the Goldwater Institute sent a letter to ASU’s Board of Regents demanding that the university stop spending money on the training, which it alleged was illegal, but ASU did not do so.
Earlier, ASU shut down the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development after it hosted two well known conservatives — Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager — triggering angry protests from professors.
Faculty are not the only people being subjected to ideologically-driven training in Arizona. Students are also required to take ideologically-driven classes. Northern Arizona University now requires students to take four diversity courses to graduate, all rooted in left-wing “critical theory.”
At Bates College, students have to take an ideologically-slanted class on “Race, Power, Privilege, and Colonialism.” It is designed to peddle the false notion that countries are underdeveloped due to colonialism. In reality, Third World countries that were not colonized are less economically advanced than those that were colonized, as the father of modern Liberia, William Tubman, noted. Tubman, who served as Liberia’s president from 1944 to 1971, observed that Liberia was economically poorer than its neighbors because it had not had “the benefits of colonization.” Colonization of Third World countries usually made them more agriculturally and economically productive, eventually curbed the practice of slavery, and led to the abolition of barbaric practices like suttee (the burning of widows on their husband’s funeral pyre). On the other hand, many people were killed by colonizers in places like the Congo, Namibia, and Tanzania.
Most people in many pre-colonization African societies were slaves: For example, the slave population accounted for two-thirds to three-quarters of the total population of Songhay-Zarma people, who created the Songhai Empire. That empire was the successor of the similarly heavily-enslaved Mali Empire celebrated in progressive high-school textbooks, whose most famous leader, Mansa Musa, went on a pilgrimage to Mecca with an entourage of 12,000 slaves to cater to his every desire.
