It’s exceedingly rare to see a university or college act with such swiftness in the face of unabashed left-wing politics as the Catholic University of America did this week.
Last week, the Daily Signal reported that Melissa Goldberg, a psychology professor at the Washington, D.C., university, had invited Rachel Carbonneau, a self-described “abortion doula,” to speak to students about coaching women through abortions.
Besides her support for abortion, Carbonneau also told students in the class that she has coached pregnant women who identify as men through “seahorse birth[s].” One student told the outlet that the lecturer conspicuously avoided using the term “woman” and instead said “birthing person.”
Rejecting the immutability of men and women and supporting abortion of course run contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church, with which The Catholic University of America is affiliated.
As soon as the university heard of the lecture, it immediately condemned Carbonneau’s comments, and on Tuesday, university president Peter Kilpatrick announced that Goldberg had been fired from her position at the institution.
“As a Catholic institution, we are committed to promoting the full truth of the human person, and to protecting human life from conception to natural death,” Kilpatrick said in the announcement. “In our rigorous pursuit of truth and justice, we engage at times with arguments or ideologies contrary to reason or to the Gospel. But we do so fully confident in the clarity given by the combined lights of reason and faith, and we commit to never advocate for sin or to give moral equivalence to error.”
It’s not every day that you see a university fire a professor a week after teaching material in a class that violates the employment contract that the professor signed, and for this, Catholic University should be commended.
But the episode should also be instructive. Universities and institutions with a very defined mission like Catholic University are all too often hesitant to respond to employees who actively undermine the mission of that institution.
Goldberg is free to believe what she wishes, and there are any number of colleges and universities out there that have no qualms about hiring a professor who is perfectly fine with lectures describing a “seahorse birth.” But there should be no expectation that such beliefs should be promoted in the classroom at a place like Catholic University.
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Whether or not the mission of an institution is carried out successfully daily depends on its personnel. If employees are committed to the cause of the institution, then the cause will be advanced. But if dissenters exist within the ranks, the institution will be hampered by infighting and factionalism while the cause suffers. This goes for all religious organizations, universities, and even political groups and movements.
The episode at Catholic University should serve as a lesson on the need to vet prospective employees for their commitment to the institution’s mission. But if a current employee is undermining and opposed to the mission of an institution, it is good to fire them. And as Catholic University showed this week, the sooner the better.