Who Would Jesus Fire?

What are the most repressive colleges in the country? If you listen to the far right, they'll start grumbling about elite Ivy League schools. But the reality is that worst censorship can be found at religious institution. This fact is revealed yet again in this story about the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, which fired Sheri Klouda from her job as a Hebrew professor because she is a woman. President Paige Patterson (who one imagines is sensitive about this because he has a girl's name) decreed that since the Apostle Paul says, "I permit no woman to teach or have authority over a man," so long with any women teaching the men at his little bigot training center. (Of course, the idea of having female students is too shocking to even bring up.) Patterson responded to a question of what he thinks about women by quipping, "I think everybody should own at least one."

Unlike the cases of alleged injustice conservatives, which are heavily publicized by the far right's well-developed media system, this case might have disappeared completely if not for a blogger whose story was picked up by a local newspaper and then got a few lines on InsideHigherEd.com. But you'll hear no outrage from the usual complainers about bias in higher education, who give religious colleges a blank check for the most outrageous violations of equality and academic freedom.