The University of Oklahoma has made an announcement about the Samantha Fulnecky affair. It’s the wrong one.
A student’s claim of religious discrimination on an individual assignment in an online Psychology Course taught by a graduate teaching assistant has come to resolution. As stated previously, the student followed two available processes at the University: the grade appeals process in the college and she made a formal claim of illegal religious discrimination. As already announced, the grade appeal was decided in favor of the student, removing the assignment completely from the student’s total point value of the class, resulting in no academic harm to the student.
The claim for discrimination has been investigated and concluded. The University does not release findings from such investigations.
At the same time of the investigation, the Provost—the University’s highest ranking academic officer— and the academic Dean reviewed the full facts of the matter. Based on an examination of the graduate teaching assistant’s prior grading standards and patterns, as well as the graduate teaching assistant’s own statements related to this matter, it was determined that the graduate teaching assistant was arbitrary in the grading of this specific paper. The graduate teaching assistant will no longer have instructional duties at the University.
Because this matter involves both student and faculty rights, the University has engaged in repeated and detailed conversations with the Faculty Senate Executive Committee to ensure there is an understanding of the facts, the process, and the actions being taken.
The University of Oklahoma believes strongly in both its faculty’s rights to teach with academic freedom and integrity and its students’ right to receive an education that is free from a lecturer’s impermissible evaluative standards. We are committed to teaching students how to think, not what to think. The University will continue to review best practices to ensure that its instructors have the comprehensive training necessary to objectively assess their students’ work without limiting their ability to teach, inspire, and elevate our next generation.
So the university “investigated” and concluded that the respectful, entirely correct evaluation of the essay by the TA, Mel Curth, was out of line, and has fired her from all of her teaching obligations. I think that means they have lost all of their income, unless they also have a research fellowship. And for what? Because they applied solid academic standards to a student paper and deservedly failed her work.
They haven’t thought through the consequences of this action. Every OU student now has a cheat code: mention Jesus in your crappy essay, and you’ve got an excuse to protest if you don’t get a passing grade. That immediately devalues a diploma from OU. I know I’m going to be sneering at modern OU degrees from now on.
Another consequence is that it’s only going to get worse — Christian fundamentalists will flood into OU, while secular students will look for just about any other university to attend.
I can’t wait to claim religious discrimination when my geology paper about a flat Earth is downgraded. It’s in the Bible‽
I believe the student has publicly admitted that they did not read the article the paper was supposed to be about and wrote the paper in 30 minutes.
These obscene decisions are just the sort of ignorant, bigoted, transphobic crap that is destroying the credibility of what is left of the educational system in this DEATH SPIRAL country!
I hope that TA, Mel Curth, finds a better position at a civilized institution.
This is what will happen to anyone trapped in the dysfunctional state of Oklahoma and teaching any where.
When they see an answer or essay full of fundie xian gibberish, they will have to give it a 100% and an A and move on.
What other choice do they have anyway?
.1. If they grade that answer on its merits, they get fired immediately and everyone from the governor to the head of the University and the “Academic Dean” (Cthulhu knows what pressure they put on them) sign on to that.
.2. They can follow the new University guidelines and keep their job, while the would be martyr slides through the school without the attention they were looking for.
If you want to fight for what is right, you have to pick your battles well, and this one is a guaranteed loss.
FWIW, there have been many court cases about this sort of situation.
In normal states, the fundie xian creationists have lost.
Here are two.
and
PS I’ll add here that when teaching evolution, you can be careful and ask for what science has found out about evolution and what the Theory of Evolution is and says.
That sidesteps the problem that science, reality, and the Theory of Evolution falsifies some people’s religious beliefs.
People can believe whatever they want and no one can make you believe in the Theory of Evolution. But that isn’t what the question is asking. It is asking about knowledge, whether you believe it or not is your own business.
OU is not a university. It is a training facility designed to put academically marginal students into the NFL and to generate millions of dollars in the process. The inclusion of non-athletes at the facility is merely a smokescreen to provide cover for this real purpose.
In the news:
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/politics/2025/12/23/mel-curth-samantha-fulnecky-essay-oklahoma-ou-graduate-students-demand-reinstatement/87895839007/
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The dispute has gained national attention, millions of comments on social media and sparked a student-led protest at the university.
In a statement late Monday, leaders of the OU Graduate Student Senate said they disagree with OU’s decision and insist that Curth be reinstated. They added that the decision indicates the administration has “not sufficiently reflected on the harm that these actions will cause the graduate student, the general student body and the university’s faculty.”
“If we, the students, are the University’s promise, then the University owes us integrity, excellence, self-reflection, and the courage to stand up for its instructors,” they said. “The administration’s actions have depreciated all of OU’s degrees, directly harming OU’s student body.”
To add a fuller perspective on this debacle. In the 1960’s the Univ. of Calif. system, think Berkley, was a open to all viewpoints and there were only a few reasonable limitations put on free expression in that troubled time. However, now, that same system has become a willing tool slurping up the koolaid of the nasty yahoo aipac bigots.
https://www.juancole.com/2025/12/californias-outlawing-criminalizes.html
California’s New Law Outlawing Criticism of Israel Quashes Academic Freedom, Criminalizes Teachers
H. Scott Prosterman 12/22/2025
A California District Court hearing on was held on Wednesday, December 17, over an injunction sought by plaintiffs represented by the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) against a new law, California AB 715, which is supposedly intended to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism. But it no more does that than does that than convicted felon Donald Trump’s Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, to which many mainstream Jews object. Rather, it demonizes and criminalizes teachers who dare to be candid about the realities of Israel and Palestine.
However, I fear that, as happens in all these cases, all these protests will intentionally be ignored by the terrible xtian terrorist bigots of the admin of UofO.
Wheee! down the Death Spiral we’re pushed.
Whoa, I must admit that @6 Raven posted a few exceptions to my blanket condemnation. However, from what I’ve read over the past couple of years the odds are greatly in favor of the xtian and aipac terrorists.
shermanj, I took a look:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB715
That bill does not say what Juan Cole claims it says.
(Did you read it for yourself, instead of taking his claim at face value?)
[oops, wrong tab, I was looking at the original]
The bill: https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab715
To @13 John Morales. you are correct in that it does not specifically state that. However, having read a different posting of excerpts of that bill, others in our org. have also concluded, the real world effect of it would be consistent with what Prosterman wrote.
How so, shermanj?
It’s very clear what it says. And it ain’t about criticising Israel.
Maybe read the bill itself; 1(c)..(e) has the gist:
John, I have read many articles by Prosterman. He holds an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan and is very well versed in the culture of the San Francisco Bay Area and the university. What he and others are saying is that the law was written with a very clear bias toward Netanyahu’s Likud government and many of the claims in it seem to be hyperbole. And, that, given other similar laws, the reality of how it will be implemented is that it will be used to bludgeon anyone that supports the Palestinian protests. Our member, R. Stark, as a Jew and a scholar, commented that he is upset when he sees these manipulations and suppressions as a result of our decaying, ever more intolerant society. This is a parallel to the U of Okla. incident.
Yeah, he’s upset at a bill that seeks to protect Jewish people.
Again: look at the language.
He is a political pundit, not a legal scholar, a legislative analyst, or an expert on California statutory interpretation. I’m not disputing whatever expertise in Middle Eastern Studies or his cultural acquaintance of the San Francisco Bay Area and the university, but you know… California a bit bigger than SanFran.
It’s rhetorical polemic, is what it is.
But OK, though the bill does not say what he says (I did say Cole before, but obs he published it so endorses it) it may be misused to do what he says it will do.
Therefore a bill that establishes protections for Jewish people should not be accepted, on the basis that though it’s literally all about antisemitism, it could be misused as about antiIsraelism.
OK. That’s your take, and their take.
(I myself go by the text of it, the primary source)
How much of a pattern would this need to become to threaten OU’s accreditation? Or is that basically impossible anymore?
At the risk of feeding trolls on all sides of the bridge and under the river itself:
As a legal scholar who has also dealt with related issues court (including in California), the California courts are most likely going to follow existing rationales regarding similar legislation for other “not quite hate speech advocating actual violence but we’re still not going to tolerate it” issues in California. That would be bad.
At the same time, there are vast distinctions among “decrying war crimes,” “decrying antisemitism,” “decrying theocracies,” “decrying racist forms of Zionism,” and “criticizing a foreign government’s policies and procedures notwithstanding their supposedly virtuous objectives.” However, almost no one who enters this contretemps is interested in them. One is reminded of “the only good German…” memes of 80 years ago, and of Nancy Reagan “being a Contra too.” If, that is, one is paying attention to context in the first place — things like recalling that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a social conservative who wanted a return to the Romanovs, in addition to being outcast of the Soviet Union. All of that is bad.
Actual antisemitism is bad. So is any other form of bigotry based on parents’ status (maybe excepting disdain for/distrust of trust-fund kids, but some of my undergraduate friends were trustfundies).
Criticizing Washington and Jefferson as slaveholders does not make me anti-American. It doesn’t even make me anti-Founding-Fathers. Similarly, criticizing the Third Congress for the Alien and Sedition Act doesn’t make me anti-American, either. And perhaps most to the point, criticizing convicted war-criminal military personnel doesn’t make me anti-military…
I’m carefully not stating anything about Oklahoma here as I’ve been stationed there, about 25 kilometers from the campus in question. I can only say [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [cannot confirm or deny] regarding this sort of nonsense.
There’s certainly a bit of exaggeration for polemical effect in Cole’s piece and interpretation. It is not, however, an unlikely interpretation of likely legal treatment, let alone unreasonable (unlike the counsel who would be trying to privately use it to suppress opinions inconsistent with their theocratic impulses). This is bad legislation, from the old tradition of “something must be done; this is something; therefore, this must be done” school of thought.
They have bowed to the bullies and done so on a matter of what constititutes reality itself.
The really horrid thing is that doing so is no longer unusual indeed become the usual thing far too often.
Now there’s this precedent set and people have seen this happen, does anyone think it won’t occur more elsewhere and the rot won’t spread quickly throughout the USoA’s tertiary education sector?
Thanks, Jaws.
Fulnecky gave an interview where she describes being on her way out to attend a musical with her roommate, but she had an assignment to do. She didn’t read the paper. She read the topic and says in the interview, “Oh, this will be easy because I have strong opinions on this subject.” That was it. She dashed off her opinion and turned it in.
In addition to being poorly written, it didn’t address the subject matter at all. No mention of the source paper, methods or conclusions. Of course not, it was all her opinion.
Boo to OU.
The announcement from the university says “…the Provost—the University’s highest ranking academic officer— and the academic Dean reviewed the full facts of the matter.” I have to congratulate the university for their ability to review “the full facts of the matter” in record time. It would take many weeks or months for any other university to review “the full facts of the matter” at multiple levels, department chair; dean; provost, let alone analyze all of the grading that the TA did in other courses up to now.
John Morales, with all due respect for your knowledge of your culture, quoting a few lines of a law with no context or knowledge of those who pushed for that law or of those that wrote about that law or the culture a half-world away from you and in which you have not been immersed should not convince people.
The founder of our organization has works of his which were selected by UCLA and that were put in their cultural archives. He spent the first half-century of his life in California, studied at universities there and was immersed in their student and political culture.
Professor Juan Cole is one of the most respected authorities on mid-east culture. He writes expressing his serious concern for the safety of both Jewish and Muslim peoples; and we feel that way, too. Our founder has known and corresponded with him and read his works for years and has come to highly respect his knowledge and opinions, as have many other respected people. The fact that professor Cole found merit sufficient for him to republish that work by Prosterman should be sufficient to garner respect for it in our culture and elsewhere.
I don’t expect you to change your opinion. However, I do ask that you accept and respect the knowledge and integrity of Professor Cole and our honest, caring and knowledgeable expressions in this matter.
shermanj, I linked to the entirety of the bill. All of it.
Yes, I only quoted a few lines (rather relevant ones), because I didn’t want to paste the entire document to make a simple point. And I don’t need to live there to read the damn thing for myself and compare that to the claim.
You bought it line, hook and sinker because you did not look at the source material.
“Rather, it demonizes and criminalizes teachers who dare to be candid about the realities of Israel and Palestine.” is what you believe, on the basis of that piece. But it is not what it says.
You do your epistemology, I’ll do mine.
Mine includes perusing primary sources, not going by others’ opinions unless there is no recourse.
Truth matters.
California is not the Middle East, is it?
It is USAnian culture, USAnian bills, USAnian politics.
@25 John Morales
All of which you are unfamiliar with, John. Your opinion is worth exactly zero here.
@9 shermanj
I was raising the alarm the other day about AB 715. It’s completely off Blue-No-Matter-Who’s radar. I hope for their sake it’s exactly the nothingburger John predicts it will be, but I trust all the [ex-]Muslim orgs when they’re saying it will be used against them.
behold the specimen:
It’s not my opinion. I linked to the bill, it does not say what the article claims it says.
Again: But it is not what it says.
Anyway. Point you missed is that “Professor Juan Cole is one of the most respected authorities on mid-east culture.” means shit when it comes to bills introduced in the USA for USAnians.
“I was raising the alarm the other day about AB 715.”
Yeah. I addressed it at the time. Took around ½ an hour.
Then you did your characteristic ‘run, run away’ thingy. Fly-by.
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But anyway, thanks for the Chrissy pressie.
I wish all people of a beneficent nature well.
R. Stark reminded me, in college people used to say: ‘Entfernen Sie sich, der Ochse hat die Abhandlung gefressen’