The Idaho Way: Boise State has a workplace liability issue with professor Scott Yenor

By Scott McIntosh, Opinion Editor

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Boise State University should review the grading history and tenure decisions by political science professor Scott Yenor, after he clearly advocated for discrimination against women.

His comments this fall to the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida, go beyond merely academic exploration. Yenor made clear that women shouldn’t be encouraged to pursue careers, that their role in society is to be wives and mothers.

“Young men must be respectable and responsible to inspire young women to be secure with feminine goals of homemaking and having children,” he said. “Every effort must be made not to recruit women into engineering, but rather to recruit and demand more of men who become engineers. Ditto for med school, and the law, and every trade.”

Can you imagine being a woman in one of his classes, where your grade is dependent on a teacher who thinks you shouldn’t be pursuing a career, that you should aspire only to childbirth and tending to the home fires?

What parents would want to send their daughters to a school where one of its professors thinks women shouldn’t be there?

Is this really what conservatism is all about? Talk about identity politics. Conservatives clamor consistently about freedom — you know, like women having the freedom to pursue careers. “Girls are taught to be as independent as boys are said to be,” Yenor shrieks, as if that were somehow a bad thing.

Please read our full editorial here on the situation over Yenor’s speech.

Hypocritical

BSU is right to stand up for academic and intellectual freedom — values that Yenor has worked to undermine but will hide behind, hypocrite that he is. Like free speech, academic and intellectual freedom are the sorts of values that are meaningful only if they are upheld in the case of detested views, writes opinion writer Bryan Clark.

State senator weighs in

Dear Mr. Yenor, Words matter.

Your recent divisive words mattered, but in a way you may not have expected — they actually united the very group of “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome” women you hoped to segregate and diminish. People across Idaho are raising their voices on social media to celebrate women for the very achievements you condemn, from being a first-generation college student to a medical doctor or civil engineer, writes Idaho Sen. Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise.

Wrongful convictions

Idaho did the right thing this year by passing the Idaho Wrongful Conviction Act, which allows compensation for exonerees. But legislators can do more to make sure we prevent future travesties of justice, writes Robin Long, the legal director for the Idaho Innocence Project.

Tuition-based kindergarten

Tuition-based kindergarten is class segregation. It’s on the Idaho Legislature to solve it, writes the editorial board.

What you’re saying

This week, we’ve received letters criticizing the recent statements of Boise State University Professor Scott Yenor.

You can read those letters and more by clicking here.

You can submit a letter to the editor or guest opinion by clicking here.

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