January 11, 2008

1 of 3 Fired Professors at Oral Roberts U. Gets His Job Back

A professor who had sued Oral Roberts University for wrongful termination got his job back on Thursday, the Tulsa World reported today.

The professor, John W. Swails, was one of three faculty members who sued the university in October, after they were fired. The scandal stirred up by their dismissal, which featured accusations of lavish spending and political impropriety by the university’s president, Richard L. Roberts, led to his resignation in November. He has denied those allegations.

Details of the settlement with the professor, including his reinstatement, were not disclosed. The other two professors have reportedly not settled.

Also this week at Oral Roberts, two members of its Board of Regents resigned. They were I.V. Hilliard, a co-founder of a church in Texas, and Benny Hinn, a evangelical broadcaster famous for faith healing. He is among six such broadcasters being investigated by a U.S. Senate committee over their compliance with tax laws. —Thomas Bartlett

Comments

1. I think the person who should be fired is the one who decided to call the Oral Roberts institution a “University.” Read or re-read Cardinal Newman’s essay, “The Idea of a University,” and then compare this with the “education” that Oral Roberts offers. The disconnect is overwhelming.

   — Donald E. Winters, Ph.D.    Jan 11, 01:58 PM    #

2. The very thought that a “uinversity” would knowingly target one political party as a class exercise and require students to work for that party – along with financial support from that party – is repugnant to me. This operation is a church verging on a cult, not a university.

   — Al    Jan 11, 04:16 PM    #

3. Could it be that ORU provides no more indoctrination or social engineering than the typical school? I spent 4 years at ORU and 4 years (in grad school) at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I heard more political rants and vitriol at CU in a month than in 4 years at ORU. The administration was corrupt and needed to go—no doubt about it. But to equate this school to a cult is silly and uninformed.

   — CW    Jan 12, 03:58 PM    #

4. CW: I looked at the course offerings, both undergraduate and graduate, and was repulsed. This did not look to me like a real “university“education. It looked thin and dogmatic. I’d wager that one could rarely find a student there who did not vote for George W. Bush or at least support his campaign.

   — Donald E. Winters, Ph.D.    Jan 12, 05:49 PM    #

5. So it’s Marx and Lenin at “legitimate universities” vs. Limbaugh and Gingrich at “thin and dogmatic” ORU. May the best philosophers win!

   — John    Jan 14, 06:42 AM    #

6. I teach at a public university, and you will have no difficulty finding hard-core Republicans on campus — both on the faculty and in the student body. In fact, our so-called liberal students report, confidentially, that they are frequently afraid to express their opposition to the current administration, the war in Iraq, etc. To think that all public institutions are hot-beds of liberal — much less Leninist — brainwashing and propaganda is as ignorant as thinking that all universities connected to religious institutions are incubators for the John Birch Society. Has everyone with a Ph.D. gone mad?!

   — Sally    Jan 14, 06:51 AM    #

7. Sally: You must teach at a very different public institution than Ithe one where I have taught, in Minneapolis, since 1980. Here very few students would admit to being plagued by the diseases of Bushism, pro-war sentiments or imperialismitis. Students here are thoughtful, progressive (for the most part), working class and democratic (with a small “d”). Few here seem to have fallen prey to the war-on-terror hysteria instigated by our unelected president or his misguided followers.

   — Donald E. Winters, Ph.D.    Jan 14, 11:44 AM    #

8. The problem with academia isn’t that it includes insufficient political diversity. The problem is that, as a culture, it doesn’t tolerate political diversity. The institutions themselves embrace all viewpoints as a matter of policy, but the faculty squelches dissent as a matter of culture. Consider this thought experiment: you’re at a gathering of faculty from your department, and standing in a group of four or five people. They are discussing abortion. If you were on the tenure track, and you believed that abortion was morally wrong, would you say so?

   — RBAJ    Jan 15, 09:51 AM    #

9. RBA: yes I would

   — Donald E. Winters, Ph.D.    Jan 15, 10:23 AM    #

10. Donald: And are you prepared to say, with a straight face, that by doing so you would not adversely affect your chances of getting tenure? (Suppose that you’re in the Department of Social Work.)

    — RBAJ    Jan 15, 10:47 AM    #

11. RGA: Yes I am prepared to say that with a straight face. I am a proudly admitted Trotskyist who had absolutely no difficulty getting tenure. I am in the Humanities not Social Work department. Students and faculty are enthusiasic supporters of political, social, sexual, philosophical diversity.

    — Donald E. Winters, Ph.D.    Jan 15, 12:52 PM    #

12. Donald: The fact that a Trotskyist can get tenure in a humanities department has no bearing on my question. To repeat: do you really believe that someone who openly professes opposition to abortion would be as likely to get tenure in a social work program as one who professes the opposite view?

    — RBAJ    Jan 15, 02:05 PM    #

13. RBA: Yes. But I would have to be aware of the actual situation and the actual institution.

    — Donald E. Winters, Ph.D.    Jan 15, 08:28 PM    #

14. RBAJ: I think the word that should be used is not tolerate, but support and encourage, diversity. We tolerate bad behaviour. We encourage diversity.

    — Bill    Jan 16, 11:02 AM    #

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