On Nov. 27, the University of Oklahoma chapter of Turning Point USA went viral on X for claiming that a student, Samantha Fulnecky, received a failing grade for “quoting the Bible in her essay.” After a severely misleading headline, the group also posted the instructor’s feedback, affirming that it was not an issue of belief but that the essay “does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive.” 

After Fulnecky’s complaint, the instructor, who is transgender, was put on administrative leave. The university confirmed that the second instructor was “removed from teaching after promising to excuse the absences of students who attended a protest on Friday over the first instructor’s suspension.”

The university released a statement on Dec. 5 condemning the actions of the lecturer and reporting that “the lecturer has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.”

At first glance, this is yet another case of conservative grift. We’ve seen it before: someone whose bigotry and ineptitude are not accepted turns to conservative organizations to seek protection for their ignorance and to punish the people who refuse to accept this hatred through job terminations and nationwide smear campaigns. 

But this situation is also one of the first symptoms of student discontent showing just how pervasive these ideas of the faults of education can be. It is only when students feel that their ideas are more reliable than the lesson plans of their university that they acquire the confidence to turn to TPUSA to fight their battles. 

Fulnecky is not simply a right-winger trying to gain notoriety for controversy, but apparently an emboldened student who believes so vehemently that she is right that she cannot be compelled to learn, not even in an institution that exists to teach, and she pays to learn. This is the effect of the echo chamber of current conservative thought. Anything that supports conservative values is acceptable and revered, even if it isn’t backed by any sort of evidence beyond vague subjective interpretations of references to the Bible. But hey, I thought facts don’t care about feelings? 

This is the obvious consequence of an environment of growing anti-intellectualism. And as anti-intellectual sentiment seeps into students, we’re seeing (again) academic and broader higher education policy used as a weapon to fight facts, especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ ideas and people. It is another form of overreach by political forces that has been greenlit under this presidential administration and current political climate. We’ve seen other forms of eroding higher education, from cutting funding to threatening investigations. 

And how are higher education institutions responding? Several universities, including Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, UPenn and the UVA have “made deals with the administration.” When institutions give in, it’s only a matter of time before the intellectual exercise of higher education is questioned and eroded completely. As institutions grapple to keep their funding and operation, students are internalizing the anti-education rhetoric that universities can be one of the last refuges from. But these compromises don’t just appease an authoritarian administration — they allow incidents like this to happen and reach national consciousness with a seriousness that they never should have been afforded. 

This is the culmination of universities’ bending to political pressure, shifting paradigms and legal precedent. 

In prior years, universities might have come out en masse, abhorred by OU’s decision. Now, it seems pretty quiet. The events at OU remind us that creating students who are competent, open-minded and rigorous in their work is of the utmost importance for universities. It also reminds us that our work is not for nothing, and that our ongoing struggle is against more than one administration, but against all attacks on education. 

In an environment of growing anti-intellectualism, higher educational institutions have a responsibility to uphold the central tenets of education. This is exactly why the OU administration’s bending to the TPUSA agenda is such a violation. Beyond their protection of bigotry and their willingness to throw their professors under the bus purely on the basis of identity politics, OU’s decision strikes at the heart of academic life. Higher education isn’t about rejecting beliefs out of a knee-jerk anti-dogma sentiment, but rather about ensuring they are rooted in rational thought. At the heart of it, Fulnecky turned in unresearched, biased, bigoted work and deserved the failing grade. 

It’s a scary time for higher education, and no one wants to be next on Trump’s chopping block, but staying silent does nothing to ensure that won’t be the case. These are the consequences of backing down one too many times: individual inaction is collective failure. We must proceed with courage, willing to fight for education.