Professor "Religious-people-are-moral-retartds" Shortell gives up bid to head department at Brooklyn College

I once posted about an outrageous Brooklyn College associate professor of Sociology that was promoted to Department Chair. He had referred to religious believers as "moral retards" in an online journal that he wrote privately. Well, from Ignatius Insight Scoop comes this NY Sun follow-up that chronicles a brief return to sanity at Brooklyn College. The great Shortell has given up:

Timothy Shortell, an associate professor in the sociology department at the CUNY senior college, sent a bitter e-mail on Monday to several departmental heads saying he had decided to step down as chairman-elect and claiming he was a victim of a political attack.

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"After witnessing the amount of venom directed at me by some members of the department during the last two weeks," he wrote, "I have come to doubt the possibility of any amicable solution." The e-mail was forwarded to The New York Sun by the chairman of the department of television and radio, George Rodman.

Well, he certainly knows how to bow out gracefully, doesn't he? How reasonable of him. Of course, maybe if he hadn't offended 98% of Americans--at least some of whom attend, or work, for Brooklyn College, he's be the Department Chair.

Other faculty members (and even a CUNY Trustee), after all, were concerned over whether or not he would give religious professors in his own department a fair deal:

Critics of Mr. Shortell's appointment, including at least one CUNY trustee, opposed giving a leadership role to a professor who has used inflammatory language to describe religious people, fearing he would be incapable of fair treatment to people of faith in his department.

"If he's dropping his bid, it would be the first recent wise move on his part," a member of CUNY's board of trustees, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, said. "While he's entitled to his voice, the school is certainly better off served by a different chair."

The great Shortell may protest all he wants about being the victim of "political attacks." Carl Olson of Ignatius Insight Scoop puts things into perspective for him:

Now, imagine that I was a professor at Brooklyn College and I wrote the following:

"On a personal level, homosexuality is merely annoying - like bad taste. This disorder represents a significant social problem, however, because homosexual activists fail to recognize their limitations. So, in the name of their orientation these moral retards are running around pointing fingers and doing real harm to others. One only has to read the newspaper to see the results of their handiwork. They discriminate, exclude, and belittle. They make a virtue of closed-mindedness and virulent ignorance. They are an ugly, violent lot."

Do you really think that I would keep my job? That I wouldn't be slapped with a lawsuit? That I wouldn't be turned into a whipping boy of the media? Exactly right.

Indeed!

Of course, all reasonable people know that it's open season on religious believers. The Fools. If they're Foolish enough to believe that God actually exists and calls people to relationship with himself, and that people need to act a certain way in order to live that relationship, they deserve whatever they get.

Fortunately, enough Fools at Brooklyn College looked out for the rest of us Fools. One reasonable man will have to sit out.