According to the NY Times Dr Thio "had changed her mind about teaching because of “the atmosphere of hostility by some members of our community towards her views and by the low enrollments in her classes.”
NYU students voted with their feet.
It's a pity that now she can play the victim card, and claim she's a casualty of the gay agenda. I would say she's a casualty of her own bigotry — but then David Duke claims he is also a victim of bigotry. Looking glass logic.
However, had she been present at NYU it would have given the students and the school a real opportunity to expose her thinking to the light of reason on an ongoing basis. We will not have the opportunity now. While I thought the appointment was idiotic on the part of NYU, it was an opportunity to create dialogue (though most likely not with her, since it is clear her mind is closed) with the international and Asian communities. We don't have that chance now, and it's too bad.
But then, perhaps Dr. Thio recognized that she would have been this opportunity for ongoing withering critiques. Perhaps she should take an appointment at Liberty University, where the intention of avowed Christians to impose their views on the government is out in the open.
I appreciate the Statement from Dean Richard L. Revesz of the New York University School of Law making clear not only the history of the appointment, but the subsequent email exchange between Dr. Thio and various students. The only issue I take with the explanation is that they only looked at her published scholarship, and not her speeches as a legislator. In the field of Human Rights law, the record of a legislator on the subject of human rights is not tangential. It is central. The law is not onl scholarship — it affects real lives, and in Singapore the law says my expression of love is a criminal act.
I do find it hard to believe that the faculty was unaware of her position given that is was so public and controversial even in Singapore. And I somehow suspect that if she had advocated the criminalization of the practice of any non-Christian religion she would never have received this appointment. So while I agree with the Dean about academic freedom, and I welcome honest intellectual dialogue, I don't believe that ideal would have been served with this appointment. Her withdrawal however, means that the demonstration of bad faith on her part in intellectual dialogue will not be on view. And that's a loss.
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