Pushback: Stalinist St. Philip’s College in Texas loses 2nd lawsuit, reinstates teacher fired for daring to teach basic biology
St. Philip’s College, the poster child of academic
blacklisting and censorship
Bring a gun to a knife fight: For the second time in less than two months, Stalinist St. Philip’s College in Texas has lost a lawsuit for violating the rights of a teacher.
First, in late December it agreed to pay fired professor Will Moravits a $185K settlement for forceably ejecting him from the campus and firing him, simply because he allowed open debate in his classroom about the queer agenda. Moravits did not want his job back, as he readily admitted he was now very happy teaching at nearby Texas State University where “his peers treat him with respect.”
Now it has been forced to settle a second lawsuit with another professor, Johnson Varkey, who it fired in January 2023 for simply teaching basic biology in his biology class. Varkey had had the nerve during a November 2022 human anatomy and physiology class to state that human sex is determined by the X and Y chromosomes, a basic fact of biology. Four students walked out of the class in outrage, and then filed slanderous and false complaints to the administration, which then fired Varkey without due process.
According to Varkey’s legal firm, the non-profit First Liberty Institute, the college has reinstated Varkey.
The parties reached a favorable settlement which, among other provisions, guarantees that Dr. Varkey will be back in the classroom by fall 2024.
Other details of the settlement were not released, though it has also been reported that the university did not apologize to Varkey for its actions.
In other words, St. Philip’s recognized that if it didn’t reinstate Varkey, who had been teaching the identical course using the same identical materials for twenty years, it faced major financial loss if it fought the laswsuit. It backed down, but it also appears it still does not wish to change course in general. As I wrote in December when Moravits won his case,
No reforms have been instituted, and it appears the school’s administration is still good with the idea of using unsubstantiated accusations by anonymous students as a basis for disciplining and firing professors. Under that framework St. Philip’s is nothing more than its own mini-Soviet Union. At any moment a single student can get a professor removed. All the student has to do is make up some offense by that professor to the modern Diversity-Equity-Inclusion mantra, and poof! that professor is gone.
The administration’s willingness to back down in this case however might be linked to the state legislature’s ban last year of all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs at state-funded colleges, as well as the major heat from Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and four Texas congressmen (Chip Roy, Michael Cloud, Lance Gooden, and Dan Crenshaw), who wrote a letter [pdf] condemning the college for its treatment of Dr. Varkey and demanding a response from it by mid-January or be threatened with a loss of federal funds.
St. Philip’s is a public community college with extensive funding from federal and state sources. It appears its administration decided, at least for now, that prudence in these cases might be wise. It backed down, but don’t think for a second it still isn’t demanding compliance with its DEI and queer agenda programs from both teachers and students. It knows that this is what the loudest students at the college want, and the administration is quite eager to give it to them.
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St. Philip’s College, the poster child of academic
blacklisting and censorship
Bring a gun to a knife fight: For the second time in less than two months, Stalinist St. Philip’s College in Texas has lost a lawsuit for violating the rights of a teacher.
First, in late December it agreed to pay fired professor Will Moravits a $185K settlement for forceably ejecting him from the campus and firing him, simply because he allowed open debate in his classroom about the queer agenda. Moravits did not want his job back, as he readily admitted he was now very happy teaching at nearby Texas State University where “his peers treat him with respect.”
Now it has been forced to settle a second lawsuit with another professor, Johnson Varkey, who it fired in January 2023 for simply teaching basic biology in his biology class. Varkey had had the nerve during a November 2022 human anatomy and physiology class to state that human sex is determined by the X and Y chromosomes, a basic fact of biology. Four students walked out of the class in outrage, and then filed slanderous and false complaints to the administration, which then fired Varkey without due process.
According to Varkey’s legal firm, the non-profit First Liberty Institute, the college has reinstated Varkey.
The parties reached a favorable settlement which, among other provisions, guarantees that Dr. Varkey will be back in the classroom by fall 2024.
Other details of the settlement were not released, though it has also been reported that the university did not apologize to Varkey for its actions.
In other words, St. Philip’s recognized that if it didn’t reinstate Varkey, who had been teaching the identical course using the same identical materials for twenty years, it faced major financial loss if it fought the laswsuit. It backed down, but it also appears it still does not wish to change course in general. As I wrote in December when Moravits won his case,
No reforms have been instituted, and it appears the school’s administration is still good with the idea of using unsubstantiated accusations by anonymous students as a basis for disciplining and firing professors. Under that framework St. Philip’s is nothing more than its own mini-Soviet Union. At any moment a single student can get a professor removed. All the student has to do is make up some offense by that professor to the modern Diversity-Equity-Inclusion mantra, and poof! that professor is gone.
The administration’s willingness to back down in this case however might be linked to the state legislature’s ban last year of all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs at state-funded colleges, as well as the major heat from Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and four Texas congressmen (Chip Roy, Michael Cloud, Lance Gooden, and Dan Crenshaw), who wrote a letter [pdf] condemning the college for its treatment of Dr. Varkey and demanding a response from it by mid-January or be threatened with a loss of federal funds.
St. Philip’s is a public community college with extensive funding from federal and state sources. It appears its administration decided, at least for now, that prudence in these cases might be wise. It backed down, but don’t think for a second it still isn’t demanding compliance with its DEI and queer agenda programs from both teachers and students. It knows that this is what the loudest students at the college want, and the administration is quite eager to give it to them.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
These two profs missed the big point.
They should have demanded millions for loss of prestige, academic standing and slander. The students should have also been included since they are the ones who started this whole thing.
As soon as the students are the ones getting hurt for false accusations they will think twice about even starting the fight. They are only making the accusations now because they can do it for free and never get held responsible.
What a shame, but not all that surprising. I previously held the public colleges of the Alamo Community College District (ACCD) in high regard. I felt those institutions really helped working-class folks in San Antonio/South Texas with getting common sense degrees and certifications for real world professions. Indeed, my paraprofessional certifications and an Associates degree came from the District’s San Antonio College – and those served as a foundation for my subsequent B.A. and M.B.A from other universities.
But alas ACCD is taxpayer funded, so the heads of St. Philips College and ACCD have no incentive to apologize or change it’s policies. At least until those folks are held personally liable and/or the taxpayers decide to defund the district.
pzatchok: you have a good point with “loss of academic standing”. Those professors are now well-known for their ethics and courage but those are exactly the traits our academia selects against.
It becomes more difficult for them to find work, and where they find work their work will not be cited (just plagiarised).
I like the arguments this religious guy makes as he defends women to a leftist woman. Note their body language as she’s hunched over looking at her phone and he stands up straight and looks her in the eyes.
(47 second video)
“How to Respond to Woke Women Who Call You Misogynistic for Not Being Woke [VIDEO]”
https://rumble.com/v4ej4lc-how-to-respond-to-woke-women-who-call-you-mysoginistic-for-not-being-woke.html
I have seen that hunched posture on nerds in front of religious zealots who think the Earth is flat too–that can go both ways. Women are raped in women’s prisons by so-called “trans women.” Secularists can be appealed to on those grounds.