When others were too afraid to speak up, a California college history professor did and now may lose his job amid allegations of hate speech and racism.
According to Fox News, tenured professor Matthew Garrett says the allegations are completely fabricated.
Garrett and other Bakersfield College faculty are members of a free speech coalition and were targeted after asking questions last October during a diversity meeting held on campus. After the meeting, Garrett received notice he was being removed effective immediately from the diversity committee. The administration also accused him of unprofessional conduct, noting he had done real harm to students.
In speaking with Fox News Digital, Garrett confirmed that he was not the only person with growing campus frustrations about recent district changes they feel are radical. He said, Many of the faculty quietly tell me thank you for speaking up because were afraid to do so. He said other professors were concerned that social equity initiatives weakened academic standards.
Fox News reported Garrett alluded that racial equity initiatives, including Critical Race Theory, had radically transformed the campus in the last two years after national attention was drawn to Black Lives Matter.
Garrett said, In the last two years, weve adopted Critical Race Theory, diversity training, implicit bias training, micro aggression trainings. Weve adopted racial quotas and preferences, affirmative action-type behavior; weve adopted racially segregated classes, weve adopted mandated masks, compulsory vaccines, and location-tracking software. Weve got funding going to propaganda webpages you can track through grants.
The professor said, A lot of the faculty are really concerned about the dissolution of rigor, as social programs focusing on inclusivity, [where] everyone passes take the place of academic programs.
In 2021, after his job was threatened, Garrett filed a lawsuit. According to his attorney, Arthur Willner, Garretts case noted an increasing problem of intolerance towards free speech across university campuses.
Willner said a hostility toward the First Amendment by the district caused many faculty members who did not agree with their liberal ideas to keep silent to save their jobs. The districts notion that students and faculty members have a right not to be offended and not to hear ideas that they find disagreeable somehow trumps the First Amendment rights of everybody else.
Garrett shared that one professor specifically said she did not want diverse opinions on her race committee; others are colluding with administrative officials to target faculty members that dont buy into woke ideologies.
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