I have received the following email:
You may have read in the media that Prof Paul Z Myers of Minnesota University appealed on his blog for someone to send him a consecrated host, so that he could desecrate it.
Myers’s appeal was made in response to death threats sent to a Catholic student in Florida from other Catholics. The Catholic student in Florida received the threats after he took the communion host he was given at Mass “hostage” over what he saw as a disproportionately high percentage of his College fees going to chaplaincy provision. He later returned it.
The rather shocking image of the host Prof Myer’s desecrated can be found here, but note the image is, in my opinion, rather nauseating.
Myers’s actions have apparently caused another copy-cat attempt in the UK.
Following calls for Myers’s dismissal, he posted the address of the President of Minnesota University on his site and appealed for people to send reasoned letters in support of him, apparently following some rather inarticulate and impassioned calls for his dismissal.
I would urge you to write a brief letter to the president of Minnesota University, Dr Robert Bruininks, pointing out in clear and reasoned terms:
1. How the actions of Prof Myers were obviously calculated to cause religious groups grave offence.
2. That his actions have brought the name of Minnesota University into disrepute.
3. And therefore ask that Minnesota University formally reprimand Prof Myers for bringing the University into disrepute.
His address is:
Dr R. H. Bruininks,
202 Morrill Hall,
100 Church Street SE,
University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis
MN 55455
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David, can I respectfully suggest you read rather more about this saga before pronouncing judgement?
ReplyDeleteThere's a really colossal omission in your account (so colossal that I can't believe you've omitted it deliberately, because that would be cynical in the extreme) to do with a rather large number of death threats received by Professor Myers.
His "desecration" (which in any case was carried out after he received these threats, and indeed was partly in response to them) is very small potatoes by comparison. For starters, it's not illegal, whereas sending death threats most definitely is.
He has still brought his university into disrepute, though. By all means prosecute those who sent him death threats. But that doesn't let him off the hook for this.
ReplyDeleteNo he hasn't. He made all the posts on his own blog in his own time. His views on religion are hardly a secret (and in any case, his "desecration" also included the Koran and a copy of Dawkins' 'The God Delusion', a point his detractors have largely ignored because it undermines their claim that he's a rabidly anti-Catholic bigot) - and there is no evidence whatsoever that they have any bearing on his ability as a biology teacher. So why on earth should he be disciplined?
ReplyDeletePut it like this - you post under your own name, and your posts are frequently extremely contentious. Does this mean that you're bringing your workplace into disrepute?
I never said that he didn't hate other people, too.
ReplyDeleteIf I did something like this, then, yes, I think that I'd be lucky to keep my tutorship. I don't intend to find out.
I never said that he didn't hate other people, too.
ReplyDeleteSo you're saying he hates Richard Dawkins and his followers as well as Catholics and Muslims?
Or have you completely missed the point of the "desecration"?