The administration had the chance to redeem the institution’s hasty decision to fire a professor for doing his job. They blew it.

When the press release went out last week that the U of I had called a meeting with Prof. Kenneth Howell and his Alliance Defense Fund attorneys, supporters were hopeful that they would reconsider their irrational and knee-jerk action against a popular professor who taught Catholic studies and the rare academic discipline of critical thinking skills.

Why else would the school go to such extent?

Because Prof. Howell has such a huge following and the cause is so noble and the grievance so gaping, they had to do something. But it turns out they chose to contrive a more ridiculous defense of their actions.

In response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of a Catholic professor who was barred from teaching after he explained Catholic teaching on homosexuality to the students in a class on Catholicism, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) has defended the decision by saying that the professor was not actually “fired” – he’s just not allowed to teach any more classes.

Further proving that in what was once known as the institutions of higher learning, intellectual exercises have given way to semantic gymnastics.