ASU West Professor to GCU: You're not real scholars you're evangelicals

Then he decries "right wing" student groups

At an ASU West faculty meeting today, a professor took it upon himself to judge the value of evangelical scholarship. Relating a story where he met two GCU students who didn’t know who Milton was, he concluded that GCU professors are not real scholars. They are merely evangelicals. He then continued on to complain that there are right-wing student groups on campus. That was nested in a conversation about professors getting death threats, seeming to imply such threats are due to right-wing student groups. And this is standard fare for many ASU professors. A group of 40+ professors were listening, and not one thought to speak up and point out his specious thinking conservatives and evangelicals.

ASU and GCU are in a competition for the same students. It isn’t surprising that a secular professor would think poorly of GCU as a competitor. GCU is not a research university like ASU. It is a teaching university. However, this professor did not say that GCU professors aren’t researchers. He said they aren’t scholars. And what was his evidence? He gave two supporting premises: 1) he met two students in the English department who don’t know about Milton, and 2) GCU is evangelical.

This demonstrates the poor thinking quality of these secular professors. That isn’t a sound argument. It isn’t even a good collection of evidence. Presumably, this professor would expect more from his students when they write an argumentative essay. But he allows himself to get away with such sloppy thinking. And he insults an entire religion that he disagrees with.

And he didn’t stop there. He continued on to say ASU should do something about right-wing groups on campus. ASU is a public university, and conservatives have every right to be students and form clubs, just like liberals do. But then this professor began talking about professors getting death threats. Does he have evidence that it is conservative students sending these death threats? If so, has he turned this over to the authorities? If not, once again, he is drawing conclusions without supporting evidence.

Parents and students, this is what you can expect from many professors at ASU. This is the quality of their thought process. And this is the prejudice against conservatives and evangelicals they will bring to their classrooms. Donors, do you want your money to support this? Legislators, please help.