While university administrators around the country seem to be reconfiguring their job descriptions in order to be caregivers for the tender consciences of an era when politics is therapy, the judges of the Sixth Circuit retain an understanding of what education and its various institutions are actually meant to do.

Karl Marx looked at the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century and declared that all that was solid seemed to be melting into air, but witnesses of the Cultural Revolution of the twenty-first century might be tempted to respond that the Communist Manifesto had only the vaguest idea of what such dissolution looks like. It is one thing to replace the hand loom with the factory production line, quite another to replace the material realities of the world with linguistic fictions.

In this context, I have noticed recently that numerous correspondents have begun to identify their “preferred pronouns” in the bylines at the bottom of their emails. Yet it is already clear that the notion of “preference” functions somewhat like “volunteer” did at my old school. It is really code for “required,” and any deviation or refusal might not simply cause personal offense but lead to more significant and sinister consequences.

Such was true in the matter of Meriwether v. Hartop, a case decided last week by the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio, had found himself in trouble for initially refusing to use the preferred pronouns of a transgender student (referred to as “Doe” in the court filing) because this would require him to act against conscience. Professor Meriwether is a devout Christian and therefore believes that reality is more than a linguistic or psychological construct. Meriwether had suggested numerous ways in which the concerns of all parties might be met, including using the preferred pronouns but adding a note to the syllabus that stated he was doing this “under compulsion” and that set forth “his personal and religious beliefs about gender and identity.” Nothing less than full, unqualified capitulation would satisfy either Doe or the university administration, represented by the dean, Roberta Milliken. In the end, Meriwether was clearly the target of a campaign to neutralize him by any means necessary.

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