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U.S.|Oklahoma Instructor Is Fired Over Student’s Gender Essay That Cited Bible
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/us/mel-curth-oklahoma-instructor-firing.html
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The instructor, a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma, gave a zero to a student who wrote an essay arguing in favor of traditional gender definitions based on biblical teachings.
Dec. 23, 2025Updated 3:57 p.m. ET
The University of Oklahoma has removed an instructor from teaching duties over her decision to fail a paper on gender that cited the Bible, in a case that has provoked a debate over academic freedom and what speech is protected in the classroom.
An undergraduate student at the university had complained to the school after she received a zero on a paper in which she cited the Bible to argue that “the lie that there are multiple genders” is “demonic.” The instructor said the assignment had not met her requirements, noting also that it was “offensive.”
The public university put the psychology instructor, a graduate student, on administrative leave, and on Monday, the university announced she would no longer have teaching duties at the university.
In a statement, school officials said they had reviewed the instructor’s prior grading standards and determined she “was arbitrary in the grading of this specific paper.”
The university did not immediately respond to questions about how it arrived at that determination.
The student’s complaint had been amplified by Turning Point USA and others on social media, and even the Oklahoma governor had weighed in, framing the matter as one of the student’s First Amendment rights. It followed other cases of university instructors who were removed from the classroom after students complained on social media and politicians commented, including at least one teacher who was fired. At Texas A&M, an instructor lost her job after a student videotaped a gender identity lesson in a children’s literature course.
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,” the statement said. “We are committed to teaching students how to think, not what to think.”
