YOU MAY NOT CARE ABOUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG CARES ABOUT YOU: Petition launched to remove law professor for “discriminatory” comments.

A petition to remove Emeritus Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy John Finnis from teaching has attracted three hundred and fifty signatures in five days. Finnis has been accused of having “a long record of extremely discriminatory views against many groups of disadvantaged people”, including the LGBTQ community. Finnis co-teaches a series of seminars for postgraduate students who choose to take the jurisprudence and political theory course in the BCL or M.Jur degree. . . .

Professor Finnis told The Oxford Student that “The petition travesties my position, and my testimony in American constitutional litigation. Anyone who consults the Law Faculty website and follows the links in the petition can see the petition’s many errors. I stand by all these writings. There is not a ‘phobic’ sentence in them. The 1994 essay promotes a classical and strictly philosophical moral critique of all non-marital sex acts and has been republished many times, most recently by Oxford University Press in the third volume of my Collected Essays.”

The petition calls for Finnis to be removed from teaching on the grounds that “university is a place to focus on education, not to be forced to campaign against or to be taught by professors who have promoted hatred towards students that they teach.”

“A place to focus on education.” If it were that, the authorities would require every student who signed the petition to submit a 3000 word essay on the Areopagitica before being allowed to return to class.