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Ed,
The issue, from a constitutional standpoint, is not whether
you can point out a way which a state university could
evaluate certain literature, history or other classes and reject them as not
meeting their requirements. I don't think anyone disagrees that this is
possible. The question that may be raised by the UC case is whether the
university evaluated the curriculum from the Christian high schools in a
non-discriminatory fashion. For example, suppose Private High A offers
history classes with an emphasis on how race affected US history and that UC
deems that class acceptable. Can the university then reject a similar
history class that emphasizes how religion affected US history. When the
State adopts a general rule, but then carves out secular exceptions to that
general rule, the State cannot deny similar exceptions to those that seek an
exception for religious reasons. I believe that is the point that Jim
was making when he discussed state actors operating with unbridled
discretion. As the UC litigation moves forward, I suspect that we
will learn more about what standards UC applied in determining what courses
were acceptable and which were not, but until we know the facts, all we can do
is speculate as to the possible results.
Gene Summerlin From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ed Brayton Sent: Monday, August 29, 2005 9:58 PM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: The Original Message: UC system sued [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
But I've already pointed out ways in which schools could evaluate the pedagogical value of literature, history and civics courses, with no response to the substance of my argument at all. Are you taking the position that any course in history, civics or literature would be equally valid as a matter of pedagogy than any other merely because evaluation of such courses is more difficult or subjective than in science? Or that no university could possibly have legitimate grounds for rejecting a course in those fields? If so, please say so. If not, then we at least should be able to agree that some courses in those areas could legitimately be rejected for credit during the admissions process. Then we must move on to the question of whether these particular courses meet some reasonable criteria for either acceptance or rejection. But since neither of us, I presume, has seen the curriculum in any of the other classes, that will be difficult to do. However, given that I have seen large portions of the textbook from the science class that is being rejected and can say unequivocally that there is not only good reason to reject it but it would be foolhardy to accept it, I think it's reasonable to give the UC system the benefit of the doubt and think that they probably have equally good reason to reject the other courses. At the very least, it's vastly premature to go off into flights of fanciful rhetoric about the UC system refusing to accept Christian students, or the like. The evidence simply does not support such rhetoric at this point. Ed Brayton |
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