Althouse: "Justice Dept. sues a university for firing a professor who switched gender."

March 31, 2015

"Justice Dept. sues a university for firing a professor who switched gender."

WaPo reports.

32 comments:

Anonymous said...: so at its core, this is a tenure story. Lot's of folks don't get tenure, but there seem to be some potential complications here.; 3/31/15, 7:53 AM
Phil 314 said...: On to the next battle front.; 3/31/15, 7:54 AM
Michael K said...: Given the deterioration in English majors in universities these days, how could anyone be fired for anything. For example.

Until 2011, students majoring in English at UCLA had to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton—the cornerstones of English literature. Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the “Empire,” UCLA junked these individual author requirements and replaced them with a mandate that all English majors take a total of three courses in the following four areas: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability, and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing.

Sounds like he/she is right in the mainstream.; 3/31/15, 8:01 AM
David said...: He wasn't fired. He was denied tenure. I think there's a difference, but not quite sure what it is. In any event, you can't deny tenure on a basis of illegal discrimination I assume. Disputes are annoyingly fact specific to those with a grand narrative to advance.; 3/31/15, 8:03 AM
Laslo Spatula said...: Scarlett Johansson told me she has a transgender woman cut her hair, and the only problem she has is that the woman's erection keeps brushing against Scarlett's arms as she sits in the chair.

Other than that.

I am Laslo.; 3/31/15, 8:06 AM
Wince said...: Here's the key bit:

The lawsuit alleges that a human resources staffer, who was not named, called Tudor and warned her that the school’s vice president for academic affairs, Douglas McMillan, had asked whether Tudor could be fired because the “transgender lifestyle” offended his religious beliefs.

The DOJ has melded with the White House and DNC coordinated messaging operations.; 3/31/15, 8:15 AM
MadisonMan said...: It seems like there might be a case, but with tenure denial, who really knows.

I don't know how important it is that a male faculty member was given guidance on how to improve his tenure request and the complainant was not. What's normal at the University?

Dad always said that a tenure hire was even more complicated than having/adopting a child. You add to your family and hope for the best.; 3/31/15, 8:17 AM
Fernandinande said...: DOJ racists at play:

Holder's Justice Dept.: Auto Dealers Give Whites Lower Interest Loans Because Used Car Salesmen Are Nice

"One reason for the delay, the people [who were 'briefed on the settlement'] said, is that federal authorities have found it complicated to determine which Ally customers are minorities who might have suffered harm. Before sending out the checks, the regulators wanted to make sure that none were sent to white borrowers, the people said."; 3/31/15, 8:18 AM
MadisonMan said...: The time that comes with transitioning could have an impact of the productivity of an Asst Professor. Either the numbers support her claim that she is worthy or they don't. How many books? How many articles written? How many grants?

Nothing like that is mentioned in the article of course.; 3/31/15, 8:20 AM
Anonymous said...: Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the “Empire,

I went to UCLA for part of my Grad school and UCI for the rest.

Those faculty need a history lesson. There was no British Empire in Chaucer's Day, nor Shakespeare's, and the only empire in Milton's day were small footholds in what became the 13 colonies and some trappers on Hudson's Bay.; 3/31/15, 8:20 AM
Curious George said...: He's an ugly bitch.; 3/31/15, 8:22 AM
tds said...: because of gender identity ≠ because of changing gender identity?; 3/31/15, 8:26 AM
Bob Ellison said...: America does seem to be descending into a roughly 1970-like era of leftist dominance:

* Obama won in 2012 despite governing entirely from a one-party position

* Leftist causes keep getting re-branded: global warming into climate change, anti-racism into micro-aggressions, anti-Israelism into pro-Palestinianism

* OWS and the "99%" idiocy, which most journalists took seriously

* Ferguson

Around 1970, leftists got into a witless game of one-upsmanship, everyone trying to out-left everyone else. This happened in Russia a hundred years ago, and of course in that great Monty Python skit about "splitters".

I think we're in that game again.; 3/31/15, 8:27 AM
Bob Ellison said...: There's a WaPo/ABC poll today that says Americans pretty overwhelmingly favor a deal with Iran. That's pretty amazing.; 3/31/15, 8:30 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: As Psychiatrist Paul McHugh from Johns-Hopkins has noted, there are rare cases of genital abnormalities, where it makes a degree of sense to have a sex reassignment surgery. Most civilized people would be very sensitive to this,

On the other hand, there's physically healthy folks who simply "want" the surgery mostly due to some mental confusion or mental illness. And, even after the surgery, the mental problems still persist and the suicide rates increase. That's why Johns-Hopkins stopped doing the surgeries.

The Left doesn't care. They view it as part of their weird "cause" to eradicate all distinctions between men & women, because in their view such distinctions are artificial social constructs.

Leftists are a sad, self-destructive lot.; 3/31/15, 8:32 AM
Bob Ellison said...: We just took delivery of 14 chicks. We requested all hens, because roosters are mostly jerks and our hens never get broody anyway.

The guy who sold us the chicks told me there was roughly a 90% certainty that these are all girlie chicks.

So I expect to end up with one rooster. But maybe he'll identify as a hen, and lay away!; 3/31/15, 8:46 AM
damikesc said...: There's a WaPo/ABC poll today that says Americans pretty overwhelmingly favor a deal with Iran. That's pretty amazing.

Only in Obama's America can people support a deal with Iran but hold up Israel and Indiana as evil beyond words.; 3/31/15, 9:15 AM
CWJ said...: Lots of questions with no clear answers. Hired in 2004. Denied tenure in 2011. After seven years, his contact must haved been renewed at least once, more likely more than once. Sounds like this time around it was Tudor's last bite at the apple. Was the male professor who received advice rather than firing in a comparable up or out position? The article doesn't say.

The article does say that Tudor received warnings from university officials, namely an unnamed HR person and the primary villain's sister no less. Of course one person's warning is another person's friendly advice. I think all of us at one time or another have been quietly told to modify statements or behavior that pisses off the boss. If it was just the fact of Tudor's gender status that was the problem, why offer a warning or advice? If it was a set of statements or behaviors that went along with that fact, then I could see why others might intervene. Again, we just don't know.

The article states that he received a faculty award just before his tenure denial. Was it truly for excellence, or was it a piece of feel good faculty politics? Normally, we should take this at face value, but in today's charged environment, cynical CWJ is not so sure.

Perhaps I missed it in the article, but how did this tenure decision at a relatively obscure university come to the justice department's attention in the first place? Who was pushing this upward, or was justice combing the records looking for a suitable test case?

Finally, and again I may have missed it in the article, but did Tudor have any surgery done? It seems as though he just started dressing and grooming as a woman. Is she really just a transvestite that has taken the extra step of claiming female identity? So how "trans" is "she?"; 3/31/15, 9:17 AM
PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...: when someone is biologically male yet claims to be mentally female, isn't that a mental illness by definition?

Or biologically female and mentally male but that seems relatively rare.

Should a university be required to give tenure to someone who is that mentally ill?

John Henry; 3/31/15, 9:31 AM
buster said...: I didn't realize that the statute prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of "sex" also prohibits discrimination on the basis of "gender". The text of the statute doesn't say that.; 3/31/15, 9:32 AM
Greg Hlatky said...: Should a university be required to give tenure to someone who is that mentally ill?

They give tenure to the mentally ill all the time. Explains a lot.; 3/31/15, 9:38 AM
CWJ said...: OK. I reread the article. Tudor filed the federal complaint. No mention of when, or whether any allied individuals or organizations were involved. The article does link to a December '14 DOJ statement that trans people are federally protected in the workplace. Now this case three months later. Tudor may have filed it, but I bet DOJ was looking for a suitable test case to back up their December statement. Since the precipitating event is nearly four years old, I wonder how long this complaint had been languishing before it became politically useful.

Also, yep no mention of surgery.

In fact, WAPO went to press with this without comment from Tudor. Tudor didn't decline to comment. She just hadn't responded before they ran the piece. This really isn't reporting. It's a DOJ press release.; 3/31/15, 9:57 AM
Unknown said...: "Stop interrupting me."

"I just said that."

"No explanation needed."; 3/31/15, 10:21 AM
n.n said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/31/15, 10:56 AM
n.n said...: In a cult operated with pro-choice or selective tenets, gender is fungible. As is currency, dignity, value, morality, etc.; 3/31/15, 10:57 AM
Jason said...: So the Holder DOJ changes the rules, redefines sex discrimination under their interpretation of the employment laws to include transgenders, and then goes searching for a case to set a precedent and finds one that transpired YEARS before the DOJ announced the change.

So anyone right now can be breaking a law or regulation that DOESN'T EVEN EXIST YET. We could all be retroactively branded as evildoers by a future bureaucrat publishing a memo and a change to the Federal Register, with no legislative input - and prosecuted or sued on that basis.

Breathtaking.

Stalinist.; 3/31/15, 11:02 AM
rhhardin said...: You don't switch gender these days. There are so many of them. It's more of a choosing a gender.; 3/31/15, 11:15 AM
Skyler said...: You can't "switch gender." You can just pretend to switch gender. That's called being a transvestite, though now perverts can be fancier and be surgical transvestites.

People are free to be perverts if they'd like. I'm also free to correctly assign them the label of pervert.; 3/31/15, 12:24 PM
Michael K said...: "There's a WaPo/ABC poll today that says Americans pretty overwhelmingly favor a deal with Iran. That's pretty amazing.

Only in Obama's America can people support a deal with Iran but hold up Israel and Indiana as evil beyond words."

Read the poll question. It has nothing to do with what is happening.

the United States and other countries would lift major economic sanctions against Iran, in exchange for Iran restricting its nuclear program in a way that makes it harder for it to produce nuclear weapons?; 3/31/15, 1:07 PM
the gold digger said...: Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the “Empire"

Well, then his plays are clearly crap and should not be taught.; 3/31/15, 4:18 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Michael K. wrote:
"Read the poll question. It has nothing to do with what is happening."
The poll says that the same percentage who approve a deal also believe it won't stop Iran from getting nukes.
WTF?
This is leadership failure from the Whitehouse. They have not bothered to explain what the goals of any such deal are to the American public.
At this point, shouldn't we have had a prime-time briefing by the Current Occupant explaining that we know the Iranian program is designed to produce nuclear warheads that will fit onto their ICBMs, and that these ICBMs have the range to reach European capitals?; 3/31/15, 5:26 PM
Jason said...: Drill SGT: There was no British Empire in Chaucer's Day, nor Shakespeare's, and the only empire in Milton's day were small footholds in what became the 13 colonies and some trappers on Hudson's Bay.

The People of Ireland would like to have a word with you. ;-); 3/31/15, 6:19 PM