Saturday, December 8, 2012

Religious Liberty And First Amendment Values Victory At Tufts !! Is Vanderbilt University Taking Note ?

A nice update to a story I posted on a couple of time. That is a victory for religious liberty, free speech, free association , and just common sense at an American university. For a overview of this story see Tough to understand Tufts evangelicals . Also see my post Tufts University Grad Now Law Prof On Concerning Religious Liberty Situation At Tufts



Now for the good news from this week see In shift, Tufts allows campus religious groups leeway in choosing leaders . The full statement from Tufts is here at  Decision of the Tufts University Committee on Student Life on Recognition of Student Religious Groups .


Now I still think for the values that TUFTS purports to have their policy overall is still problematic perhaps. But at least some progress has been made here.

Now let me a little Debbie Downer for a little bit. I intend to do another post hopefully this weekend on the somewhat disappointing reactions by some on campus and beyond. That can be summed up partly by a post by the Friendly Atheist that seems not able to see the big danger here. See his post Tufts University’s Nondiscrimination Policy No Longer Applies to Religious Student Groups . I find it somewhat troubling in his post that he has information that other RELIGIOUS GROUPS in fact are going to protest the ruling by University. Again I shall address those concerns and other related matters in a blog post this weekend hopefully.

Further some group called Coalition Against Religious Exclusion at Tufts has formed. They even have a twitter account where sadly people are wanting to reverse this ruling are uttering

things like :

Intolerance has no place in diversity.

and

If #Tufts is to be a "welcoming" community, we can NEVER allow intolerance and subjugation of the oppressed to be institutionally sanctioned .

However that post is for later. A good common sense victory for common sense and First Amendment " Values " on a private campus that purports to support such things.

Let us hope Vanderbilt University that sadly has no taken the wisdom of Tufts as to this policy takes note.














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