A blacklisted American wins in court
Bruce Gilley, formerly of Portland State University
Back in 2017 political science professor Bruce Gilley wrote a quite reasonable historical paper in the academic journal Third World Quarterly that took a look at the colonialism of the western nations in 1800s and concluded that this colonialism had not been all bad, and in fact had brought “significant social, economic and political gains” to the nations colonized.
For this sin of honest academic analysis (certainly open to debate), the academic community put together a coordinated international campaign to get his paper withdrawn and his reputation ruined. He received death threats, and later in response to these threats and this campaign — including the resignation of fifteen of its board members — the journal withdrew Gilley’s paper. It didn’t do so because of any academic flaws in the work, only because it dared state conclusions that today’s leftist, Marxist, and very bigoted academic community cannot tolerate.
Soon thereafter Gilley found himself blacklisted and censored at his university, Portland State University in Oregon. The communication manager for its Division of Equity and Inclusion, Tova Stabin, blocked him from a college X discussion group because Gilley had had the nerve in one email to quote Thomas Jefferson, noting that “all men are created equal.”
Gilley sued both Portland State as well as Stabin. Though the university quickly backed down, unblocking him and issuing a letter of apology, Gilley refused to abandon his lawsuit. At the same time, he decided to find a better place to work, and in 2024 left Portland to become a professor at New College in Florida.
This week Gilley completed his triumph in court. As part of a settlement agreement [pdf] reached in March 2025, a federal judge ruled that the University of Oregon (of which Portland State is a part) had to pay all of Gilley’s legal expenses, to the tune of $191,000.
Though this settlement also dismissed the civil charges against Tova Stabin, who had actually left the university just before Gilley’s lawsuit was filed, it also required the university to change its policies to prevent such censorship and blacklisting in the future.
Is this a victory? Yes, but only partly. The university’s insurance will apparently pay the bill, though Oregon still has to absorb its own legal fees. Its policy changes are to a great extent very shallow, and still allow it to block some speech it interprets as “creating an abusive or hostile work environment.” Furthermore, Stabin got off scot free.
And meanwhile, Gilley’s paper remains censored, merely because he was willing to recognize some obvious facts about colonialism that contradicted the leftist anti-Western “consensus” of the day. And since he has been driven out of Oregon and now teaches in Florida, Portland State has successfully purged itself of one more honest academic, making itself even less diverse intellectually.
The real solution is for this university to find itself lacking in students. Parents and high school students must consider other options after high school. If Portland State finds that it can’t attract students because of its bankrupt education culture, it just might consider rethinking that culture.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Bruce Gilley, formerly of Portland State University
Back in 2017 political science professor Bruce Gilley wrote a quite reasonable historical paper in the academic journal Third World Quarterly that took a look at the colonialism of the western nations in 1800s and concluded that this colonialism had not been all bad, and in fact had brought “significant social, economic and political gains” to the nations colonized.
For this sin of honest academic analysis (certainly open to debate), the academic community put together a coordinated international campaign to get his paper withdrawn and his reputation ruined. He received death threats, and later in response to these threats and this campaign — including the resignation of fifteen of its board members — the journal withdrew Gilley’s paper. It didn’t do so because of any academic flaws in the work, only because it dared state conclusions that today’s leftist, Marxist, and very bigoted academic community cannot tolerate.
Soon thereafter Gilley found himself blacklisted and censored at his university, Portland State University in Oregon. The communication manager for its Division of Equity and Inclusion, Tova Stabin, blocked him from a college X discussion group because Gilley had had the nerve in one email to quote Thomas Jefferson, noting that “all men are created equal.”
Gilley sued both Portland State as well as Stabin. Though the university quickly backed down, unblocking him and issuing a letter of apology, Gilley refused to abandon his lawsuit. At the same time, he decided to find a better place to work, and in 2024 left Portland to become a professor at New College in Florida.
This week Gilley completed his triumph in court. As part of a settlement agreement [pdf] reached in March 2025, a federal judge ruled that the University of Oregon (of which Portland State is a part) had to pay all of Gilley’s legal expenses, to the tune of $191,000.
Though this settlement also dismissed the civil charges against Tova Stabin, who had actually left the university just before Gilley’s lawsuit was filed, it also required the university to change its policies to prevent such censorship and blacklisting in the future.
Is this a victory? Yes, but only partly. The university’s insurance will apparently pay the bill, though Oregon still has to absorb its own legal fees. Its policy changes are to a great extent very shallow, and still allow it to block some speech it interprets as “creating an abusive or hostile work environment.” Furthermore, Stabin got off scot free.
And meanwhile, Gilley’s paper remains censored, merely because he was willing to recognize some obvious facts about colonialism that contradicted the leftist anti-Western “consensus” of the day. And since he has been driven out of Oregon and now teaches in Florida, Portland State has successfully purged itself of one more honest academic, making itself even less diverse intellectually.
The real solution is for this university to find itself lacking in students. Parents and high school students must consider other options after high school. If Portland State finds that it can’t attract students because of its bankrupt education culture, it just might consider rethinking that culture.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
You will think, say and do as you are instructed!
And you will not deviate!
So shameful and dishonest.
I have an old book from Harvard that came to the same conclusion he did. It was a translation of the book “The Epitome of History” and was called the Encyclopedia of History and covered the Second World War.
The books of the mid Twentieth Century I value more than those before or after.
Robert writes:
“The real solution is for this university to find itself lacking in students. Parents and high school students must consider other options after high school. If Portland State finds that it can’t attract students because of its bankrupt education culture, it just might consider rethinking that culture.”
Unhappily, most of the people / voters who live on the “left coast” of Oregon — as opposed to those in the eastern part of the state who are seeking to affiliate with Idaho — are *perfectly happy* with the present arrangements at Portland State, and they wouldn’t have it any other way.
We are now looking at a situation in which these left coast Oregon “progressives” have effectively seceded from the rest of the United States, at least in a cultural sense, and it is simply wishful thinking to believe that they will somehow see the error of their ways and give up their desire to live in an authoritarian, one party state like Cuba. They are HAPPY with their present arrangements, and this is reflected in the culture at their universities. Likewise their toleration of “peaceful protest” (aka, riots) in their major cities. Please pass the Kool-Aid.
See https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/protests/portland-ice-facility-clash-demonstrators/283-751a1fc4-6cd9-4088-b0fa-6fd0e3d9dd98
The real question, or so it seem to me, is how do we maintain a “United States” when these people now want nothing to do with it, and they would forcibly impose their toxic ideology on the rest of us if they could.
PS — With respect to Jeff’s comment on the books from mid Twentieth Century, they represent our culture at its zenith, as reflected in Max Lerner’s classic America as a Civilization. Since then, it has been mostly down hill.
The folks at Portland State must not be paying attention. The experiment was actually performed en masse to decide whether colonialism was detrimental or beneficial. One need look only at the aftermath of the liberation (i.e. freedom from colonialism) movements that most of the African states obtained during the late 1950s through the 1980s.
Infrastructure has by now deteriorated to the point of non-existence, simple services as well. Gasoline is not readily available – see the Nigerians drilling holes into gasoline pipelines to steal the fuel, then being immolated in the ensuing fires. Islamist militants have free rein to murder non-believers in the religion of peace. Railroads are a shell of their once-comfortable transportation past. Roads remain impassable during the wet season since paved roadways have disappeared due to lack of proper maintenance. It’s difficult to introduce Western Civ. without a decent background of religion or enlightened thoughts by those colonialized.
And when was the last time that South Africa had 24-hour electricity or water?