Bad Grades: Academic Accountability, not an Attack on Identity

In December 2025, Mel Curth, a University of Oklahoma instructor, was placed on leave after a student complained that she received a failing grade on a psychology assignment because her essay cited the Bible to argue that the belief in multiple genders is “demonic.” Conservative groups quickly spread the story, portraying the grade as proof that religious students face silencing on college campuses. Within days, what began as a routine academic evaluation had transformed into a national controversy over free speech, religious liberty, and academic freedom on and off college campuses.

But the central question was never whether the student was allowed to hold her beliefs. It was whether those beliefs satisfied the requirements of the assignment. The paper in question was meant to analyze a peer-reviewed study about how people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender. According to reporting, the instructor explicitly noted that points were not deducted because of the student’s religious views, but because the essay failed to engage with the research, relied on personal ideology rather than empirical evidence, and did not address the prompt. In other words, the student was graded on methodology, not theology.

This grading distinction matters, not just in Oklahoma, but across higher education. Increasingly, academic accountability is being reframed as religious discrimination. When students submit work grounded in scripture rather than evidence, and then characterize a poor grade as persecution, the result is a fundamental misunderstanding of both religious freedom and education itself.

Public universities are not hostile to belief. They are, however, committed to standards. Academic freedom protects the pursuit of knowledge, inquiry, and intellectual rigor. It does not guarantee that all viewpoints will receive equal credit regardless of relevance or discipline. A biology class cannot be graded on creationism. A psychology paper cannot replace peer-reviewed research with righteous condemnation. A chemistry lab cannot be completed with prayer rather than data.

This is not an attack on religion. It is the basic structure of education. Students are free to hold any belief they choose, whether that be religious, secular, or otherwise. But when they enroll in academic courses, they agree to engage with shared methods of inquiry. Scientific disciplines rely on evidence, reproducibility, and engagement with existing research. These are not ideological preferences; they are the tools that make knowledge possible.

The problem arises when accountability is politicized. In recent years, conservative advocacy groups have seized on classroom disputes to advance a broader narrative: that Christian students are under siege, professors are ideologically hostile, and universities are actively suppressing dissent. One example is the Civics Alliance, a conservative higher education network that encourages students to report professors and coursework that are perceived as ideologically biased. Groups like this have framed academic disagreements as civil rights violations, urging administrators and lawmakers to intervene in curriculum decisions and grading practices. While they claim to defend viewpoint diversity, critics argue that these efforts instead pressure faculty to self-censor and undermine academic independence. These claims often ignore the substance of the assignments themselves, focusing instead on outrage and optics. A failing grade becomes a viral scandal, and a syllabus becomes a battlefield.

This tactic has consequences. Faculty across the country report growing pressure to avoid certain topics altogether, particularly gender, race, and sexuality, out of fear that student complaints will escalate into administrative investigations or national backlash. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), new state laws and political campaigns have intensified scrutiny of classroom content, narrowing the space for honest academic engagement.

Ironically, this climate undermines the very academic freedom that critics claim to defend. Academic freedom is not freedom from evaluation or grading. It is freedom to teach and learn without political coercion. When instructors are punished for enforcing rubrics, and when administrators intervene to alleviate some public outrage rather than uphold academic standards, you do not end up with neutrality. You get capitulation.

There is also a deeper human cost that often goes unacknowledged. In the Oklahoma case, the student’s essay reportedly described the existence of multiple genders as “demonic” and harmful to youth. These statements are not just abstract theological claims. They are judgments about real people in real life. Classmates, peers, staff, and members of campus communities. When such rhetoric is reframed as merely a “sincerely held belief,” it obscures the harm it can cause in shared learning environments.

As of this writing, Curth has been “dismissed” from her teaching duties and appealed the University’s decision. Regardless of the outcome, the case illustrates how quickly academic judgment can be transformed into a political spectacle, and how vulnerable educators become when routine grading decisions are reframed as ideological hostility.

Pluralism does not mean that all statements are immediately consequence-free. It means that people with different beliefs coexist under the same shared rules that protect everyone’s dignity. A fair classroom is not one where every opinion receives the same grade. It is one where every student is graded with the same standards.

This principle has long been recognized in American law and education. Public institutions are prohibited from promoting or favoring a specific religious doctrine. They are also obligated to maintain nonreligious curricula grounded in evidence and scholarship. These commitments are not in tension with religious liberty; instead, they are what make genuine religious freedom possible in a diverse society.

When education is reshaped to accommodate the loudest ideological demands, it ceases to serve its purpose. Students lose the opportunity to learn how to analyze evidence. Faculty lose the ability to teach honestly. And public trust in higher education erodes.

Humanism offers a different framework. At its core, humanism affirms that people are capable of reason, empathy, and moral responsibility without reliance on divine authority. It insists that shared spaces,  classrooms included, function best when grounded in fairness and respect for human dignity. From this perspective, defending secular education is not about excluding religion, but about ensuring that no single belief system dominates everyone’s public life.

The question universities face is not whether religious students belong on campus. They do. The question is whether academic standards can survive a political climate that treats accountability as discrimination.

If a bad grade becomes a constitutional crisis, education itself is at risk.

Public universities must remain places where ideas are tested, not insulated, and where beliefs can be held freely, but knowledge is earned. That balance is not anti-religious. It is pro-education, pro-freedom, pro-pluralism, and ultimately, pro-human.