Is it reasonable for a university to insist that campus Christian groups accept non-Christian or anti-Christian students as group leaders? Ask a hundred ordinary Americans and you would very likely get 99 or 100 noes. Ask Rutgers University, though, and you'd get an answer that would earn a summa cum laude for political correctness.

In September, Rutgers banned a Christian group from using campus facilities and stripped the group of university funding because it selects leaders on the basis of religious belief. Rutgers is punishing the InterVarsity Multi-Ethnic Christian Fellowship for violating the university's nondiscrimination policy. That policy states that "membership, benefits, and the election of officers" cannot be biased on the basis of race, sex, handicap, age, sexual orientation, or political and religious affiliation. "Political and religious affiliation" is not really the sticking point at Rutgers, though the antidiscrimination language here would require a Democratic club to allow a Republican president, a Jewish group to allow a Holocaust-denying president, and a Muslim group to accept a leader who believes in Christianity, animism, or voodoo.

The real intention is to break or banish religious groups with biblically based opposition to homosexuality. Using apparently noncontroversial antidiscrimination rules, this tactic pressures a group to deny its own reading of Scripture. Evangelical groups have been the primary target. Two high-profile efforts to coerce campus evangelicals failed–two years ago at Tufts and last week at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

A threat. A month ago, UNC-Chapel Hill threatened to revoke university recognition of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship unless it modified its charter by January 31 and waived its doctrinal requirements for leadership positions. But the university backed off after evangelicals and the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) filed suit in the Rutgers case.

FIRE sent UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser a friendly warning letter on December 27; three days later Moeser capitulated. He said the university opposes discrimination but wishes "to uphold the principles of freedom of expression," so it is withdrawing the threat against the evangelicals. "UNC couldn't defend in public what it was willing to do in private," says Alan Charles Kors, president of FIRE. "Everybody on campus would immediately see the absurdity . . . if an evangelical Christian who believed homosexuality to be a sin tried to become president of a university's Bisexual, Gay, and Lesbian Alliance. The administration would have led candlelight vigils on behalf of diversity and free association."

At Tufts, a student tribunal defunded and "derecognized" an evangelical group for refusing to allow a bisexual member to become a leader in the group. The group said it knew that the bisexual woman was "exploring sexuality" and had no trouble with it and made no effort to expel her. But while the group supported gay rights, it also said it could not accept a leader who challenged the group's conclusion that homosexuality is incompatible with Scripture. By ruling against the evangelicals (without a hearing), Tufts in effect said that the Christian group would have to abandon its principles to remain on campus. Tufts backed down under pressure from FIRE and David French of Lexington, Ky., lawyer for the evangelicals.

The primary lesson here is not that universities are torn between freedom of religion and anti-bias rules. Rather the lesson is that administrators are willing to respond to a powerful campus group, the gay lobby, at the expense of one that is weaker and usually disfavored on campus. Though written in the bland language of brotherhood, antidiscrimination laws give critics of private groups "a public hammer with which to beat groups they oppose," says Richard Epstein, professor of law at the University of Chicago. They also provide a way for outsiders to reach into a dissenting group to determine its membership, policies, and officers.

Using a verbal screen of "diversity," "fairness," and "nondiscrimination," university officials delegitimize religion by substituting campus orthodoxy for religious principles. Even if a university feels torn, says French, its antidiscrimination rules shouldn't trump the First Amendment's protection of freedom of religion, association, and speech. Antidiscrimination laws are in fact becoming a threat to these freedoms.

I went to Rutgers as an undergrad back in the late 80s/early 90s. They welcomed a culture of political correctness at all costs. They frequently threw people out of the university for making comments which were deemed "offensive" to the University administration. Worse, this gave aid and comfort to the left wingers on campus who would, in every debate, accuse their oppononents of being some evil thing (homophobe, racist, or if they were really losing and needed to go nuclear....NAZI) which was a very dangerous thing to be considered at Rutgers, where "offensive" people were sent away without appeal. I was sickened by this intellectual terrorism and ultimately it became the initial thing which drove me towards conservatism.

Ironically, the standard bearer of all this PC crap was the University president, Alexander Pond I think it was, and he was nearly hoisted onto his own petard. He had made a comment to the effect that blacks should be given a lower admission standard since they couldnt didnt have the capacity to get the higher scores whites got and we shouldnt hold that against them. Of course that was personification of what Bush now calls "the soft bigotry of low expectations" and it was immediately seen for what it was by the black community at Rutgers. Black students were horribly offended and suddenly all Pond's PC police had to say "all this knee-jerk stuff where we get rid of people just becaus they say something we dont like is wrong, we need to be more open minded". Guess that's over with.

QUOTA KING DIGS HIS OWN GRAVE Editorial The President of Rutgers University, Francis Lawrence, has created an uproar among students with a remark about the low SAT scores of Black students. He said: "...do we deal with a disadvantaged population that doesn't have the genetic hereditary background to have a higher average?" The sweet irony is that Lawrence in reality is very politically correct. He has had an active affirmative action program at the University to promote Blacks. But this is exactly the point where he becomes a racist: by looking at Blacks as a group instead of as individuals. If Lawrence looked at Blacks as individuals, he would discover that there are many Blacks that score very high on SAT scores. What does it matter where the average of the group is!? Had Lawrence judged the applicants based on the contents of their character instead of the color of their skin, he would not have brought himself in the mess he is today. Fifty years from today the politically correct liberals with their fanatic fundamentalism about quotas will be known as the racists of our time. By judging people based on the color of their skin instead of the contents of their character they deny individuals an even break.

What Liberals Say Behind Closed Doors

Poor Francis Lawrence. Last November, the president of Rutgers University said the following at a faculty meeting:

"The average S.A.T. for African-Americans is 750 [out of 1600]. Do we set standards in the future so that we don't admit anybody with the national test? Or do we deal with a disadvantaged population that doesn't have the genetic hereditary background to have a higher average?"

Someone was recording his remarks--which went unchallenged at the time--and leaked them to the press in January. Dr. Lawrence has been apologizing and backpedaling ever since. "What I intended to say," he now explains, "was that standardized tests should not be used to exclude disadvantaged students on the trumped-up grounds that such tests measure inherent ability."-- John Nordheimer, "Rutgers Leader disavows linking race and ability," NYT, 2/1/95, p. B5.>

Rutgers President Francis Lawrence, who said minorities "don't have the genetic background to do well on college (entrance exams)."

On November 11, 1994, Rutgers President Francis Lawrence made the following statement: "The average SAT for African Americans is 750. . . . Do we set standards in the future so that we don't admit anybody with the national test? Or do we deal with a disadvantaged population that doesn't have that genetic hereditary background to have a higher average?"

at A3.

Remember Francis Lawrence, president of Rutgers University, who in 1995 quipped that black students didn't have the "genetic hereditary background" to do well on college entrance exams.

"The average SAT for African-Americans is 750," Lawrence said. "Do we set standards so that we don't admit anybody with the national test? Or do we deal with a disadvantaged population that doesn't have that genetic, hereditary background to have a higher average?"

Lawrence's words clearly hinted that he believes or believed that blacks are not only intellectually inferior but that they are born with the inferiority. What else could "genetic, hereditary background" mean?

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Mosque To Be Built on Campus

What Liberals Say Behind Closed Doors