A former ethics professor is suing the University of Arizona for firing him after he criticized policies about gender identity, and defended parental rights.
The university did not explicitly mention his public comments and participation on the parental rights group Save Catalina Foothills in firing him. But the timing of its action strongly suggests that’s why he was fired. As The College Fix notes, shortly before he was fired, the University
received anonymous complaints about Daniel Grossenbach’s advocacy work in his children’s school district….The professor founded SaveCFSD to petition the district over “policies and practices of hiding minors’ mental health information as a violation of fundamental parental rights.”
SaveCFSD claims the district has hidden minors’ mental health information, distributed gender identity surveys, and maintained secret lists of students requesting alternative names and pronouns, all without notifying parents. Grossenbach raised these issues in remarks before the school board.
After Grossenbach spoke out, making clear he was doing so as a private citizen not as a university employee, people filed anonymous complaints claiming Grossenbach ran an “anti-gay hate group.” and spread “misinformation.” The university informed him his adjunct professor slot was being eliminated to make room for new full-time professors with doctorates.
“However, he later discovered the university had posted job openings for an adjunct professor in his same department. Heavily redacted public records Grossenbach obtained suggested the administration discussed the anonymous complaints prior to halting his courses.”
Grossenbach lawsuit against the university seeks reinstatement, back pay, damages for reputational harm, and a court order against speech-limiting policies at the university. He alleges the university violated the First Amendment and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
He also says the university violated Arizona’s freedom-of-information law by initially rejecting his request for documents and then taking 239 days — far longer than the legal deadline — to provide Grossenbach with emails related to his firing. His court complaint says the university’s actions “inflicted irreparable damage to Professor Grossenbach’s professional career and reputation, ended his academic pursuit of a doctorate degree, decreased his earning potential, and reduced his income.”
His lawyers say in a press release that “the university discriminated and retaliated against him for exercising his First Amendment rights to speak out according to his religious beliefs and to protect his children.”
Grossenbach says that, in addition to losing his position, he and his family have experienced stalking and harassment. Strangers came to his house and his wife’s workplace, and a photo of his house was posted to social media.
Grossenbach said he felt a religious obligation to form SaveCFSD because of his Christian belief that “departing from God’s natural male and female design of human sexuality is a sin.”
Much of the University of Arizona may be woke, but it is not the wokest public university in Arizona. 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.
