There is no legal “right” to compel others to say things they don’t believe. Until the Supreme Court explicitly reaffirms the foundational protections of religious liberty and free speech, there will be no end to the state compulsion or harassment.

By the time I visited Masterpiece Cakeshop in 2016, Jack Phillips, the man who had famously refused to bake a specialty cake celebrating the wedding of a gay couple, had been the victim of a four-year campaign of harassment by the authoritarians at the Colorado Civil Rights Commission intent on punishing him for a thought crime.
Now Phillips is back in the news, as his lawyers attempt to get new charges against him dismissed on appeal from a Colorado judge’s decision last year.
For the past decade, the media and lawyers and judges and leftists have misrepresented Phillips’ position. No, the baker never turned a gay couple away from his shop. Or a transgender person. Or anyone else. No, he never refused to sell anyone a wedding cake (ceremonial, in the case that made him famous, as the request predated both Obergefell and Colorado’s recognition of gay marriage). Philips refuses to create any specialty item from scratch that features any message that conflicts with his long-held religious beliefs. He will refuse to create such cakes for any customer, gay or straight or black or white.
After years of fiscal hardship, Phillips finally won a 2018 Supreme Court decision, in which the Court ruled that the Colorado commissioners had displayed “a clear and impermissible hostility toward [Phillips’] sincere religious beliefs” in their efforts to punish him—by which the justices meant members had compared Phillip’s faith to that of Nazis and segregationists. While it was a personal victory, it did almost nothing to preserve religious liberty or free expression rights.
Really, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission wasn’t much of a personal victory, either. All the commission now had to do was avoid openly attacking faith. A person can still walk into a business in Colorado and demand the proprietor create a message that conflicts with their sincerely held convictions — as long as that message comports with the contemporary left’s evolving virtues.
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Written by Lawrence M. Krauss |
Tuesday, November 9, 2021
Only by speaking out…can we try and dismantle the current strangle-hold that DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] bureaucracies have on researchers and students alike and restore academic freedom and excellence as the hallmarks of science and education.

A couple of weeks ago I published an article in the Wall Street Journal describing the tyranny that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies are imposing on universities and scientific institutions. This includes excluding talented scientists who are not effective enough in displaying their DEI allegiance, enforcing ideological adherence among faculty and students, and suppressing debate on the topics of merit, quotas, free speech, and a range of gender and race issues.
In that article, I gave a piece of partial evidence of the gulag-like environment currently existing in higher education. Numerous faculty responded to an earlier Wall Street Journal piece by me about ideological corruption in science, through emails in which they indicated they were writing under pseudonym accounts out of fear that colleagues or university officials might find out that they supported my concerns.
Happily, in response to my most recent piece, no respondents suggested they were shielding their identities, although a number indicated they were writing from their “non-university” email addresses—just in case—or felt comforted by now being retired and free to write. What they present, in summary, is a chilling perspective of the pervasive and divisive atmosphere that is continuing to develop in educational and scientific institutions. I felt it worth sharing a number of these perspectives, after having consulted the individuals involved. Unless otherwise directed, I have worked to ensure the anonymity of my correspondents.
Numerous correspondents wrote to me concerned about their specific areas of scholarship. Particularly worrying were emails from those in the medical and legal professions.
Here’s one from a professor at a very prominent US medical school:
Dear Dr Krauss,Your op-ed in WSJ barely touched the problem of DEI in American biomedical science and clinical practice. The societies (e.g., Amer Society of Cell Biology) and the journals (esp Elsevier) are rife with DEImania. This is affecting clinical medicine. It is the death spiral of American medicine, with unintended consequences for the very groups it is supposed to help.What can one do?
While this is concerned in more general terms with possible impacts on the field, a very poignant email from another professor in a biomedical field illustrates the personal impact that this environment of fear and suppression is taking on the psyche of scientific researchers:
I feel like the turtle in the picture with the neck out and about to get chopped … It is strange to me that this is happening because I am a Hispanic woman with Spanish, North African, Chinese, and Native American ancestry that speaks four languages and has lived everywhere in the world, so I should be the pinnacle of what DEI is aspiring for. Nevertheless, I am experiencing the tyranny of DEI because it is not about diversity of race or sex but more about a loyalty test. This will not last forever, but the question is how much damage this will do … This year has been an authoritarian year full of tyrannical mandates and intolerance. I have never experienced having moral (mandatory DEI trainings that forces me to affirm things that go against my conscience), medical, or religious tests in order to work before this year. Innovation and intellectual greatness come as a result of freedom. Suppression of speech and ideas will result in a reduction of greatness and innovation. Freedom of speech can only be real freedom if speech that we do not agree with is allowed. Let’s include diversity of thought and ideology in what you want to protect.
Beyond academia, I wrote about the growing inhibitory impact of DEI mandates in scientific institutions, including private ones like the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In this regard, I received the following email from an HHMI employee that sent shivers down my spine:
Dr. Krauss, I am a HHMI employee and I am grateful to you for your WSJ piece. The lowest point for me was February 8th this year, when all employees were expected to read Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo. Ms. Oluo led a virtual talk that day for all HHMI employees. I trust that you know that the core motivation for HHMI’s DEI effort is to preempt any liability or negative press for two major discrimination lawsuits against HHMI by female Asian scientists. The journal Science covered these two lawsuits on 12/18/2019. Thank you again.
When it came to law schools and DEI, I received several emails from law school professors saying that the piece resonated with their own experience. I received two other legal-related responses that are of particular interest.
The first was from a student at a California law school. Several cases of law professors who have been caught up in unwarranted DEI adjudications of racism are well known and have been written about, including by me. However, the impact on their students is not so well known. Here is the email I received:
After reading your WSJ piece on “Diversity” as tyranny, I wanted to thank you for writing it. I know that took courage, especially in this political environment. Your discussion of “monomania” hit close to home. I’m a law student at [law school name omitted], and this week a brilliant torts professor has come under fire for baseless claims of racism. I wrote a letter to our DEI office defending him, though I doubt it will help.
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Sean McGowan, who pastors a PCA church in Tallahassee, Florida, echoed Groff’s assertions. McGowan noted how the PCUSA’s recent press release about its “nonbinary/genderqueer” distinction emphasized a desire to be inclusive, which he warned “may get accolades and respect from the culture,” but comes “with a serious cost.” “As the culture has gotten worse, the church has gotten worse,” McGowan said. “So it’s not surprising for many of us why the mainline church is now capitulating on transgender issues and things of that nature.” McGowan said that being a welcoming church is not the same thing as affirming lifestyles and behaviors that he believes the Bible condemns.

The largest Presbyterian denomination in the U.S. has hemorrhaged membership in recent years, which several conservative Presbyterian clergy members partially attribute to a departure from its own historical teachings.
“I believe that the lampstand has been removed, that Christ has removed his blessing from the PCUSA, and the end result of that will be just fading into oblivion,” Presbyterian pastor Zachary Groff told Fox News Digital, referencing the second chapter of Revelation.
The Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), which is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the U.S., made headlines in October when its Office of General Assembly announced that it would be adding a “nonbinary/genderqueer” option to its official church statistics in a push to be “inclusive,” according to a press release. The mainline denomination is theologically liberal and ordains women as well as practicing members of the LGBTQ community.
The PCUSA boasts 1.1 million active members and 8,813 member congregations, but it has been rapidly losing numbers during the past decade. It reported having about 700,000 more members and 1,400 more congregations in 2012. More than 51,000 members have left since 2021, according to its most recent annual report.
Rick Jones, director of communications for the PCUSA’s Office of General Assembly, attributed the diminishing numbers to factors such as aging congregations, the COVID pandemic and an increasing skepticism toward institutions generally.
Jones also told Fox News Digital that many have left because of “the denomination’s understanding of the Gospel and how it compelled us to take more progressive stands on gay marriage as well as issues like Israel/Palestine or divestment from fossil fuels.”
“The PCUSA is not alone in that nearly all mainline Christian denominations have seen a decline in membership as less and less people in this country see themselves as Christians,” he added.
Groff, who pastors a church near Greenville, South Carolina, is now a member of the conservative Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), but said he grew up and found his faith in a PCUSA church in Pennsylvania. He mentioned that his home church was one of the congregations that ultimately departed from the mainline denomination over doctrinal issues.
Issues of sexuality and gender have sowed discord not just among Presbyterians, but among all Protestant denominations in the U.S., Groff said, though he traced the root of “the current woes” in churches to deeper disagreements on the authority of the Bible.
“All of this goes back to not even an issue about sexuality directly, but an issue about theology and what we believe about God and His Word,” he said, adding that Protestant clergy’s confidence in the Bible’s teachings has been steadily eroding since theological liberalism swept into U.S. seminaries from Europe during the 19th century.
Groff believes that the growing rifts among Presbyterians and Americans generally are manifestations of “a spiritual and supernatural battle.”
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