BY JOHN K. WILSON
Last week, the Catholic University of America (CUA) fired psychology professor Melissa Goldberg one week after she invited doula Rachel Carbonneau to address her class, Psychology 379: Lifespan Development. Doulas coach women during the birthing process, and Carbonneau discussed helping “birthing persons” deal with having abortions and assisting transgender men. One student called the discussion “really upsetting” and turned over a recording to the right-wing website The Daily Signal, which ran a Jan. 26 story with the headline: “SHOCKING: Catholic University Brought in ‘Abortion Doula’ Who Coaches ‘Pregnant Men’ Through Giving Birth.”
CUA immediately declared it was “appalled” by Carbonneau and banned her from speaking on campus, and then over one weekend, CUA completed their investigation and dismissed Goldberg: “Now that we have clear evidence that the content of the class did not align with our mission and identity, we have now terminated our contract with the professor who invited the speaker.” President Peter Kilpatrick claimed, “In our rigorous pursuit of truth and justice, we engage at times with arguments or ideologies contrary to reason or to the Gospel.” However, Kilpatrick argued, “But we do so fully confident in the clarity given by the combined lights of reason and faith, and we commit to never advocate for sin or to give moral equivalence to error,”
It’s not clear if the “sin” was a speaker helping women deal with the trauma of abortion or helping trans men and using inclusive language about them. But in neither case is humane treatment of others a violation of Catholic doctrines (and Catholic colleges should always welcome ideas that challenge Catholic dogma).
Conservative media celebrated this act of repression. The College Fix opened its article on the dismissal by declaring, “University upholds religious mission” and Associate Editor Matt Lamb argued that Goldberg “failed to practice basic prudence in investigating the speakers coming to her class” which was “reasonable grounds for firing.”
In reality, the recording shows that Carbonneau offered a thoughtful and nuanced discussion. Carbonneau referred to abortion as a “crushing decision” and constantly called the fetus a “baby.” She said, “We come from the perspective of protecting life” but noted, “We’re dealing with these really hard situations” such as miscarriages and deadly genetic disorders. Caring for people is not a violation of Catholic doctrines, even if they are transgender or have abortions.
CUA explicitly promises protection of academic freedom. CUA’s Presentations Policy declares, “Academic freedom applies to activities of faculty members in their writings, lecturing and teaching.” CUA’s policy also declares, “Academic freedom applies to students in their access to all legitimate sources of information and in their participation in academic dialogue.” This agrees with the AAUP statement that “respecting faculty and student choices of invited outside speakers is part of academic freedom.” The firing of Goldberg violates the academic freedom of both faculty and students at CUA, by depriving them of the opportunity to hear different ideas.
In 2023, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett gave a speech at CUA’s law school where she praised academic freedom at Catholic universities: “being at a Catholic school is broadening. It broadens the number of topics that are permissible and the areas of inquiry rather than narrowing them. Because there’s nothing off the table.” That’s exactly right. And it’s completely the opposite of what CUA’s administration has now done.
CUA has been on the AAUP’s Censure List since 1990, when it banned Rev. Charles Curran from expressing unorthodox views. In 2020, CUA fired a professor who posted offensive tweets about Barack Obama and Kamela Harris, and FIRE accused CUA of “abandoning its promises of free expression.”
But CUA has also expressed strong support for free speech. CUA’s “Aims of the University” calls itself “a free and autonomous center of study,” a place “where freedom is fostered and where the only constraint upon truth is truth itself.” In 2021, after some conservatives stole a painting of George Floyd deemed sacrilegious, CUA’s previous president John Garvey declared that CUA followed a policy “not to cancel speakers or prevent speech by members of the community.” Garvey stated, “Our ‘no cancellation’ policy does not apply only to the administration. We hope to continue to build on campus a culture that engages in thoughtful dialogue and debate.”
When President Kilpatrick took office in 2022, he immediately embraced this “no cancellation” policy and said that he would refuse to ban speakers with controversial views: “I believe that bringing in speakers that challenge us and push us to consider different perspectives is a hallmark of a thriving intellectual environment.”
Kilpatrick is betraying those beliefs and instead adopting an extreme position embraced by right-wing cancel culture. Not only did CUA ban a perfectly reasonable speaker for a nuanced discussion of controversial issues, the president also immediately fired a professor in the middle of the semester for merely allowing this person to speak, a move made so quickly that it could not possibly meet any standard of adequate faculty involvement or due process.
This kind of incredible repression will have a terrible chilling effect on campus, and is far more destructive than merely canceling a speaker. Every professor at CUA will have to worry if they might be recorded asking a question deemed contrary to Catholic dogma, if assigning a reading with a controversial view will cost them their job, if even allowing students to express their own opinions in class could now be forbidden. Dogma is the death of intellectual debate. A religious college, as Amy Coney Barrett stated, should be a place that adds religious values to inquiry but never bans ideas.
John K. Wilson is the author of eight books, including “Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies” and the forthcoming book, “The Attack on Academia.”
