If the allegations are true, this is pretty appalling:
Goldsmith claims art department chairman Jim Craft told him on June 20 that he could no longer work at the college because he was a member of the League of the South.
The college, a Christian liberal arts college with about 1,500 students in Tigerville, had no comment Tuesday on the lawsuit filed in Greenville County.
The League of the South seeks to “advance the cultural, social, economic and political well-being and independence of the Southern people by all honourable means,” according to its Web site. It has been labeled a neo-Confederate hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
I don’t care if a professor chairs his local Klan and bakes cookies for the mafia when he’s not too busy organizing bowling night for NAMBLA; what he does outside the classroom ought be his own business, and no grounds for firing. In particular, firing someone for his political opinions outside of class is reprehensible, and goes against the spirit of free expression.
UPDATE: Prometheus 6 comments..
Good post.
Well, to be fair, it’s a Christian college. Many such schools hold their staff and students to a specific standard of beliefs and actions.
I don’t know about this school specifically, and don’t really feel like hunting throught their website to find out. But certainly such has been the case with other Christian colleges I’ve come across: students and staff agree to sign lifestyle oaths, statements of faith, permission for living quarters to be searched without warning, etc. And, *if* some version of that is the case here, then this professor knew that he was required to buy into a certain level of orthodoxy when he joined up.
Just tryin’ to keep the conversation lively.