Conservative professor: Colleges have lost purpose of debating ideas to find truth
Former Bakersfield college professor Matthew Garrett described the breakdown of free speech on campus and how academia's push for DEI allows just one viewpoint.
For the first time in over a decade, three college professors will not be greeting their students for the beginning of the fall semester, after they claimed their opposition to liberal ideologies on campus made them "targets" of their school's administration.
"It's very strange. It's kind of lonely at times," history professor Matthew Garrett told Fox News Digital.
Garrett had taught U.S. History and Native American history at Bakersfield College in California since 2010 before his opposition to social justice dogma on campus brought him into conflict with liberal professors and school officials. He was voted to be terminated in May and is continuing to fight the school district in a costly legal battle for the right to return to the classroom.
He fears colleges have lost their purpose in fostering free speech and debates over opposing ideas, in pursuit of a singular political viewpoint.
"The college is no longer a place where you can have these interesting debates on ideas. That's the purpose of college, right?" Garrett said. "We created the university, a thousand years ago, in order to flesh out these ideas and figure out what is truth, to figure out what is right. And you do that by clashing ideas together, and you sort through it all. And you can't do that anymore in the modern university because it's a violation of these new sacred cows that can't be touched."
CALIFORNIA COLLEGE PROFESSOR SAYS ‘COMPLETELY FABRICATED’ CLAIMS OF RACISM MAY COST HIM HIS JOB
Matthew Garrett, former history professor for Bakersfield College, and David Richardson, who has been put on leave by Madera Community College (photos courtesy Matthew Garrett, David Richardson)
Garrett claimed that colleges like the one he taught at for close to 13 years treat DEI initiatives as immune to criticism. Last fall, members of a free speech coalition he started were accused of racism for questioning a racial climate survey during a campus diversity meeting. Shortly afterward, Garrett received a notice of unprofessional conduct by the school claiming he had caused "real harm" to students. He was promptly removed from the diversity committee before eventually being suspended from his job.
"If it's DEI [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion], you can't disagree with it. And it's really become very strange because they're now sort of labeling anything and everything that they want— with the title of DEI," he claimed.
"Diversity is perhaps just a facade to get toward narrowing the pool to the people they really want," Garrett argued. "It's about finding people who have the same viewpoints and using diversity trainings, diversity mandates as a mechanism to really filter out people that don't have the right viewpoints."
New community college standards in the state require professors to teach DEI and "antiracist" viewpoints in the classroom, according to free speech nonprofit FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression).
Administrators have accused him of "unprofessional" conduct and "unsatisfactory performance," according to a 19-page report from interim college president Zav Dadabhoy in March.
"The report alleges Garrett defended vandalism on campus by the Hundred Handers, described as a White supremacist group by the Anti-Defamation League; publicly accused colleagues of using grant funds to advance a partisan agenda; held an in-person event against COVID-19 protocols on Sept. 8, 2021; filed 36 ‘baseless’ complaints against colleagues that resulted in 23 third-party investigations; and sent a threatening email to Trustee John Corkins claiming to possess documents that showed ‘past indiscretions,’ among other accusations," InsideHigherEd.com reported.
Garrett has denied these accusations.
History professor David Richardson will also not be joining students this fall semester, after teaching at Madera Community College in California for the past 25 years. He was suspended by the college at the end of the last spring semester after he offended a colleague by bringing "anti-woke" chocolate bars mocking pronouns to a campus event.
LGBTQ person holds pins about gender pronouns on the University of Wyoming campus on August 13, 2022. (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images) ((Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images))
"Not being at school this semester has been rough. I didn't realize how much of my identity was wrapped up in my career," Richardson told Fox News Digital in a phone interview. He said he will miss being able to get lost in the past through teaching his class and seeing history through fresh eyes every year.
Richardson is a plaintiff named in the FIRE lawsuit against California's community colleges over its new mandated diversity requirements. Like Garrett, he thinks these standards "eliminate" diversity of viewpoint and create a chilling effect on free speech.
The college administration has pushed this "new cultural narrative on us, and anybody who pushes back becomes a target," he said.
Both professors said students and faculty have privately reached out to express support for their cases but admitted they were too afraid of the repercussions they could face by taking a public stand.
"I know that there are a lot of people, faculty members out there who don't agree with this. But they're too intimidated… That part of it is a little bit frustrating, because I think if more people actually stood up, it would be much more difficult for the administration to sort of ram these things through," Richardson said.
"It's very scary what's happening on the campuses," Garrett said. He described how some conservative students have shared with him how liberal professors have sent nasty emails or kicked them out of their classes for challenging their politics. Many students he said however are apathetic about the threat to free speech on campus.
"They don't have the perspective to see that the academy is collapsing before them and that they're losing opportunities to learn and discuss difficult ideas," Garrett added.
Biology professor Dr. Johnson Varkey will also not be returning to the classroom this fall after teaching at St. Philip's College in San Antonio, Texas, for 19 years.
COLLEGE ALLEGEDLY FIRED BIOLOGY PROFESSOR FOR TEACHING SEX WAS DETERMINED BY CHROMOSOMES X AND Y
Dr. Johnson Varkey (Courtesy of First Liberty Institute)
Last November, some students walked out of his classroom after he stated sex was determined by X and Y chromosomes. Despite the fact that Varkey taught from a school-approved and science-based curriculum, St. Philip's College said his teaching was religious and terminated him in January. He recently filed a religious discrimination charge with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
"As an adjunct professor, Dr. Varkey taught Human Anatomy and Physiology to more than 1,500 students since 2004. He consistently received exemplary performance reviews and was never subject to discipline in his two-decade career. He never discussed with any student his personal views—religious or otherwise—on human gender or sexuality," First Liberty Institute, the law firm representing Varkey, said. The firm is demanding he be reinstated to his position.
Male and female chromosomes. (BSIP/UIG Via Getty Images)
Garrett warned these "inclusion" principles on campus don't just hurt conservative professors and students who speak out against them. They've also crept into the corporate world, which is a "serious problem for the future of society," he said.
"We've created this bubble where they [students] won't have to see many different views. And I wonder what sort of damage that does, because that's how you find better ideas," he said. "And what does that do to us? What does that leave? It leaves us to a place where we're going to be following confirmation bias, and we're going to have shortsighted, self-affirming solutions that don't really fix things and end up making things worse."
All three professors felt their respective administrations had not treated them fairly when examining the claims against them.
Varkey said he wasn't given "due process" from the school or given the opportunity to tell his story to the administration before they let him go. "None of those things happened so far," he told Fox News Digital.
Richardson said he has not received any official word on his fate at the school after his name was scrubbed from his classes on the district schedule. Despite persistent emails to the college, he does not know if he will be allowed to teach in the spring, as the registration deadline approaches.
University of Wisconsin-Madison students, from left, Marisa Skelley, Martin Jarzyna, Sam Broadnax and Morgan Menke hold up signs protesting racism on campus during a meeting for the UW System Board of Regents on campus in Madison, Wis., Dec. 11, 2015. (Amber Arnold/Wisconsin State Journal via AP, File)
Garrett said the school has cut off his funding, salary, benefits and pension. He believes the school is planning on bankrupting him into a settlement through a multi-year legal fight, based on the district "consistently appealing everything."
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Bakersfield College did not respond to Fox News Digital's most recent inquiry.
Kern Community College District, which includes Bakersfield College, told Fox News Digital last May that the board "did not agree with Garrett's characterization of the events" and his firing was "not an issue of free speech."
"We support the rights of all members of our community to speak out on issues of concern whether on political issues or those involving the College," the school relayed in a statement to Fox News Digital.
They argued Garrett had been "repeatedly warned" his unprofessional conduct was violating code and disrupting campus. "[W]e had no choice but to move forward with action, which has all been done in accordance with legal policies and procedures and contract rights," the board said in part.
Madera Community College declined to comment on Professor Richardson's suspension. Alamo Colleges District, which includes St. Philip’s College, did not immediately respond to an inquiry from Fox News Digital, but said last month that it does not comment on personnel issues.
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Fox News' Kendall Tietz contributed to this report.