I wish I could say that what I am describing hasn’t taken a personal toll. But it has taken exactly the toll it was intended to: an increasingly intolerable working life and without the protection of tenure. This isn’t about me. This is about the kind of institutions we want and the values we choose. Every idea that has advanced human freedom has always, and without fail, been initially condemned. As individuals, we often seem incapable of remembering this lesson, but that is exactly what our institutions are for: to remind us that the freedom to question is our fundamental right. Educational institutions should remind us that that right is also our duty. 

Peter Boghossian has taught philosophy at Portland State University for the past decade. In the letter below, sent this morning to the university’s provost, he explains why he is resigning.
Dear Provost Susan Jeffords,
I’m writing to you today [09/08/21] to resign as assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University.
Over the last decade, it has been my privilege to teach at the university. My specialties are critical thinking, ethics and the Socratic method, and I teach classes like Science and Pseudoscience and The Philosophy of Education. But in addition to exploring classic philosophers and traditional texts, I’ve invited a wide range of guest lecturers to address my classes, from Flat-Earthers to Christian apologists to global climate skeptics to Occupy Wall Street advocates. I’m proud of my work.
I invited those speakers not because I agreed with their worldviews, but primarily because I didn’t. From those messy and difficult conversations, I’ve seen the best of what our students can achieve: questioning beliefs while respecting believers; staying even-tempered in challenging circumstances; and even changing their minds.
I never once believed —  nor do I now —  that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion. Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought; to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions. This is why I became a teacher and why I love teaching.
But brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division.
Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues. Faculty and administrators have abdicated the university’s truth-seeking mission and instead drive intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions. This has created a culture of offense where students are now afraid to speak openly and honestly.
I noticed signs of the illiberalism that has now fully swallowed the academy quite early during my time at Portland State. I witnessed students refusing to engage with different points of view.  Questions from faculty at diversity trainings that challenged approved narratives were instantly dismissed. Those who asked for evidence to justify new institutional policies were accused of microaggressions. And professors were accused of bigotry for assigning canonical texts written by philosophers who happened to have been European and male.
At first, I didn’t realize how systemic this was and I believed I could question this new culture. So I began asking questions. What is the evidence that trigger warnings and safe spaces contribute to student learning? Why should racial consciousness be the lens through which we view our role as educators? How did we decide that “cultural appropriation” is immoral?
Unlike my colleagues, I asked these questions out loud and in public.
I decided to study the new values that were engulfing Portland State and so many other educational institutions — values that sound wonderful, like diversity, equity, and inclusion, but might actually be just the opposite. The more I read the primary source material produced by critical theorists, the more I suspected that their conclusions reflected the postulates of an ideology, not insights based on evidence.
I began networking with student groups who had similar concerns and brought in speakers to explore these subjects from a critical perspective. And it became increasingly clear to me that the incidents of illiberalism I had witnessed over the years were not just isolated events, but part of an institution-wide problem.
The more I spoke out about these issues, the more retaliation I faced.
Early in the 2016-17 academic year, a former student complained about me and the university initiated a Title IX investigation.  (Title IX investigations are a part of federal law designed to protect “people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.”) My accuser, a white male, made a slew of baseless accusations against me, which university confidentiality rules unfortunately prohibit me from discussing further. What I can share is that students of mine who were interviewed during the process told me the Title IX investigator asked them if they knew anything about me beating my wife and children. This horrifying accusation soon became a widespread rumor.
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Probably the most wicked lie of all is that children stand in the way of a woman’s purpose and self-satisfaction. There is no doubt that our culture holds children in derision, for they are literally sacrificed through abortion in the name of self-advancement. Children bear the brunt of “progressive ideas” that disrupt the pattern that God has designed. We tell ourselves that they are resilient, too young to notice, or they need to be conditioned away from societal norms that are outdated and too restrictive. The truth is that our homes are meant to be a haven, a place of protection and stability from the outside storms. 

Who would have expected that a little college in Kansas could be the source of such cultural outrage? On May 11th, 2024, Harrison Butker, Superbowl champ and an unapologetic Catholic man, delivered the commencement address at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.  In his speech, he spoke boldly about his convictions rooted in his Catholic faith.  Butker addressed or alluded to many moral hot topics in our culture today, but the one that is getting the most visceral attention are the comments he made about the value of women choosing, as a primary vocation, the role of a homemaker.
I have to admit, Butker’s remarks on the value of homemaking is not what you would typically expect in a commencement address to a graduating class in 2024.  The backlash has been vicious outside this small Catholic community.  His remarks clearly hit a primal nerve.  The response reveals how little value our culture places on motherhood, children and home life.  Being a homemaker as a primary vocation is seen as outdated – even demeaning – and unfulfilling for a woman.  This attitude makes me grieve for the next generation.
As I attend multiple graduation ceremonies this season, I wonder if our young Christian women are prepared for the onslaught of subtle and not so subtle messages that will pull their hearts away from building a Christian home as a primary vocation.  As Christian women, many of us homemakers, how do we prepare our daughters and granddaughters so that they see the significance and beauty of our design and purpose as it is displayed in our vocation as homemakers? 
“Diabolical Lies”
In his speech, Butker says to the women in the audience, “I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you.”  I would summarize his comments in this way: These “diabolical lies” are rooted in the disregard of the value of being a wife and mother as a primary vocation.  To pull back the curtain further, there are deeper lies that have led to that disregard:

Women are interchangeable to men and that the distinctions between men and women are unimportant,
The home is a secondary pursuit,
Self-fulfillment is the highest moral goal, and
Children get in the way of a woman’s success.

Before a lie can exist, truth must exist.  The Scriptures direct us to what is true about who we are as women.  We must start with what God says about the value of women; we do not need to cobble together a “modern” sort of category that helps us navigate who we are in the 21st century.  God’s word is sufficient for us to gain a clear, foundational understanding of who we are as women even as the world is changing all around us. 
Truth Defines Lies
Honestly, I wonder how many of us who claim to be Christians truly look to the Scriptures to understand our value.  I’ve read and heard many messages about Creation and fall of man and woman in the Garden as recorded in Genesis 1-3.  It grieves me that the familiarity of that passage can breed ennui or how I so quickly forget who God says I am.  But we must go back to the beginning – we must!  Before we examine the lie, we must first see the truth. 
So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen. 1:27-28)
God created man and woman in His own image.  He imprinted upon us the image of His character, to reflect His glory and be His representatives in the world He created.  Being made in His image gives all humans worth, dignity, and value.  God gave to both men and women a purpose to steward all the splendors of His creation and the means to subdue it.  It needs to be said again: God’s design for women was never of less value, dignity or purpose than men.
That does not mean we were made without distinctions.  God made man both male and female.  In His wisdom, He made His most marvelous creation – human beings – in two distinct categories, and together, male and female best reflect the fullness of the image of God.  He gave man the primary role of provider and protector.  He gave to the woman the primary role of life bearer and helper.  This is the pattern that He established at the beginning.  It was “very good” and afterwards, God rested from all His work (Gen 2:2).  He was satisfied. 
Yet, are we?  As Christian women, do we draw our identity from this truth? 
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Some are leaving the faith (deconstructing) because they are rejecting a false view of God’s deliverance. How many of us are weak in the face of trials and/or temptations? Pretty much all of us! The person who has been taught and believes that we will have the power in ourselves to overcome all trials in our own strength is bound to be horribly disillusioned. We must rely on God’s strength to give us contentment and have complete reliance on God in the face of trials. The false view should be rejected and replaced with the biblical view.

All of us have heard claims about things the “Bible says” that we do not find in the Bible. Some of these claims are just plain false, while others are likewise untrue but have the advantage of being humorous. The character of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof was constantly spouting things that supposedly “the good book says,” which were comically indicative of a man of faith who was not biblically literate:
Tevye:As the good book says, when a poor man eats a chicken, one of them is sick.
Mendel:Where does the book say that?
Tevye:Well, it doesn’t say that exactly, but somewhere there is something about a chicken.
In another exchange, Tevye managed to name Biblical characters and quoted Biblical phrases but didn’t seem to be able to match the quote to the correct persons:
Tevye:As Abraham said, “I am a stranger in a strange land…”
Rabbi’s Son:Moses said that.
Tevye:Ah. Well, as King David said, “I am slow of speech, and slow of tongue.”
Rabbi’s Son:That was also Moses.
Tevye:For a man who was slow of speech he talked a lot.
Quite funny, yet Tevye’s conclusion was false because the passages were taken out of their rightful context. It also demonstrates the ease with which someone may think they have biblical knowledge when they do not.
In our lives, we’ve sometimes heard such things as “The Bible says ‘God helps those who help themselves.’” This may have been said so often it seems like it must be in there somewhere. But, as hard as it may be to believe, it is actually nowhere to be found in the text of the Bible. In fact, the Scriptures teach the opposite. God cares for those who are not capable of helping themselves, which, as it happens, is all of us. Another popular text is, “God will never give you more than you can bear.” Again, we just don’t find it in God’s holy writ. The closest text maybe 1 Corinthians 10:13. As it happens, in context, the Apostle Paul is writing about temptation and sexual immorality, not difficulties in general. It will help if we back up from verse thirteen to the beginning of the chapter to get the meaning.
In 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, the Apostle Paul cites the Nation of Israel, who had been “baptized into Moses,” as examples of the engagement of the people of God in idolatry and sexual immorality (1 Corinthians 10:7-8) as well as the resulting judgment (1 Corinthians 10:9-10). Paul applies this to the Corinthians because some in the church there were engaging in idolatry and sexual immorality. He recited this history as examples and warnings and pointed out that this course of action didn’t work out so well for The Nation of Israel – and won’t work out well for them either:
Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. (1 Corinthians 10:12)
There were many idols to be worshiped and temple prostitutes enticing the Corinthian believers to partake, but Paul doesn’t leave the believers with no resources to combat the temptations that were all around them in Corinth. He wrote:
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.  (1 Corinthians 10:13-14)
Notice that Paul does not say God will remove the temptation – God would have to eliminate the city to do that – nor the desire fueled by the temptation. The tools He provides are fleeing and escaping temptation, which He strengthens us to do. Paul gives young Timothy the same counsel.
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