The University of Southern Maine’s Christy Hammer, who could fairly be described as a “woke” professor herself, is the target of an effort by students to remove her from teaching a class because she answered a student’s question honestly.
Hammer, an associate professor of Teacher Education at the public (taxpayer-supported) university, was teaching a graduate course last month, entitled “Creating a Positive Learning Environment,” when a student asked her how many sexes there were. Hammer responded, “Two.”
That upset the student who asked the question, Elizabeth Leibiger, who identifies herself as “nonbinary,” or neither male nor female. Leibiger told the media, “I felt under personal attack.”
“I let her know,” Leibiger said, “I didn’t think she was qualified to teach a class about positive learning environments. It’s the ultimate irony.”
Actually, the “ultimate irony” is that Dr. Hammer’s response is somehow considered “controversial.” Throughout human history, it has been widely understood that human beings are either male or female. In fact, the Bible states clearly that God created human beings male and female. Scriptures say nothing about any other sex.
But if a professor were to ridicule the Bible as being full of myths and fables, Christians and Jews would be expected to accept that as “academic freedom” in almost every public college and university — and in most private colleges, including supposed “Christian” colleges — across America.
It is also ironic that the university system structure we have today was largely created by Christians in the Middle Ages, with the expectation that a community of scholars would share differing views (diversity) in a spirit of unity in advancing knowledge — thus the term university. That a student would feel “under personal attack” because a contrary opinion was stated by a professor or student in the classroom would have been considered a joke only a generation ago.
But this is not the prevailing attitude in most American colleges and universities today. Only views that meet the litmus test of radical leftist thought are now permitted to be espoused in the classrooms of higher education. In fact, even woke progressives themselves must tread very carefully, or they too will come under fire, in much the same way the French Revolution and the Communist Revolution in Russia eventually murdered some of their own early supporters.
No one is calling for Hammer’s execution, or for the execution of other college professors who do not toe the woke progressive line — yet — but it should be noted that she is no hard-core Christian conservative. In fact, until she dared to deviate from their agenda, progressives heaped honors on her. She received the Martin Luther King Jr., New Hampshire state award for anti-racism in schools in 2000, and in 2007, the Bahai Fellowship of New Hampshire gave her an award for prejudice reduction in the schools.
Professionally, Dr. Hammer has been a member of the World Affairs Council and was co-founder of People Against Racism in Education. She received training at the Equity Institute, and has been a consultant in civil rights law in education on the subjects of race and gender equity and on the issues of gender and science.
Before she taught at the University of Southern Maine, Hammer was an adjunct instructor on Race, Culture, and Oppression at the University of New Hampshire. And she has written several articles that would fit into the woke progressive ideal.
Yet, because she recognizes that there are only two sexes, she must be “re-educated” or put out to pasture.
According to the Bangor Daily News, only one student in the class agreed with Hammer’s statement of biological reality, with 21 of 22 students opting to stage a “walk-out” from her class, demanding a “restorative justice meeting” to be held with Southern Maine’s School of Education and Human Development and that Hammer be replaced, arguing that she is “transphobic.”
Leiberger said, “I want her to do some diversity training at least — or just retire.”
It should be noted that Leiberger asked a question for which she believes there was only one acceptable answer. Since Hammer didn’t give that answer, she should go through “diversity training” (the communists call it “re-education”) or be forced into early retirement.
During the Cultural Revolution in Communist China under Mao Tse-tung, one of history’s most brutal dictators, students likewise outed teachers in universities who did not toe — exactly — the Communist Party line as espoused by Chairman Mao.
At this point, university administrators have refused to fire Hammer or remove her from teaching the course. But instead of telling the students to either finish the course with Hammer and learn to listen to opinions with which they may not agree 100 percent of the time, the university is compromising.
“We have developed an alternative plan for this class,” university spokesperson Gina Marie Guadagnino told the media, “and will be opening a new section of this course for students who would like to move. The original section taught by Professor Hammer will continue for any student who wishes to remain in that class.”
Fortunately, not everyone in southern Maine denies the biological fact that there are two — and not more — sexes. A petition signed by more than 1,800 people has called upon the university to support Professor Hammer.
“A university that cannot teach facts because students find them too hard to handle is useless as an educational institution,” the petition argues. “We the undersigned ask USM President Jacqueline Edmondson, Interim Provost Adam Tuchinsky and Chair of the Teacher Education Department Flynn Ross to stand firmly behind Professor Hammer and issue a public statement to the effect that she will neither be replaced nor required to stop stating the fact that sex in humans is binary.”
Why is this madness even happening? After all, in past years, individuals who believed themselves to be Napoleon or Jesus Christ, or thought they were animals, or thought they were of a sex different than their biological sex, would be pitied as insane and consigned to a mental institution.
But this lunacy is being pushed — with a straight face — because it fits nicely within the overarching goal of cultural Marxism to destroy the institution of the family consisting of a biological male married to a biological female, along with any children resulting from that marriage. The Marxists’ desire is to replace devotion to one’s family with devotion to the socialist state, and anything that advances that goal — however ludicrous — is peddled in academia, the media, and popular culture.
