Duquesne University Refuses to Recognize Campus Atheist Group

They [the DSS] assume positions that are antithetical to
belief in God,…

Like intellectual integrity, and careful, thorough, and intrepid thinking, perhaps?

and belief in God is at the core of our enterprise at
Duquesnse,” McCloskey said.

And after all, we wouldn’t want to undermine our enterprise.

There’s only one word for the Student Government Association’s stance on this:

Cowardice.

Promoting respectful relations between people holding different religious beliefs?
An open debate on the merits of secularism?
Trying to do away with the stigmas attached to atheists?
Who knew Catholics were so against those things?

Ummm….everyone who has paid attention at any point in the last 1500-2000 years?

why havent one of these groups sued these catholic schools yet?  i know they are private institutions by i assume they all receive federal funding of some sort.  and federal funding is predicated on federal anti-discrimination laws….

I’ve wondered if I were the only one that wonders why anybody is surprised whenever X catholic/evangelical/mormon/whatever-religion school refuses to allow, assist or even recognize an atheist/humanist group?

To push a metaphor: it’s like it’s like trying to start a bacon-eating club at a vegan university.

Cool 🙂

I didn’t think the word was well known on this side of the pond.

I had a similar thought – until I found out that they recognize a Jewish and a Muslim group. Also, many Catholic theologians have created arguments for the existence of God, so addressing the question of whether there is a God is a solid tradition in the Catholic church. As the group is not about “preaching” the non-existence of God, but about a discussion of whether or not God exists, it seems to be well within the bounds of traditional Catholic discourse.

Of course, as they are a private school, they can make their own rules. This just seems to be a pretty arbitrary and nonsensical rule. (Of course, religion itself is nonsensical and arbitrary, so I guess this is not really very surprising.)

I suspect the number of students who change from theistic to atheistic positions is far greater than the number of students who convert from Catholicism to Muslim, for example. The Muslims probably won’t pick up any new converts. Improved critical thinking and consideration of religious questions tends to change peoples’ minds toward atheism, regardless if that was the explicit goal.

Jamila Bey
Duquesne University 1994-1999

I am saddened and not in the least surprised. Duquesne helped turn me (and dozens of its other grads) into agnostics and atheists.

“This organization has a non-faith-based agenda”

Like the football team, the archaeology society, the literary club, the debate squad, film club, etc.  With around 300 student organisations on campus what proportion have specifically faith based agendas?

This is really a reply to some other posts as well, but I’m going to stick to making it once, and it is most related to your comment.

I have had similar thoughts about this, but reading this particular post I had a different thought, namely that student groups are about students, not about the school or its administration, government, or mission statement. If a college or university wants to have a large and diverse student body (and most Catholic Universities, as well as the big Mormon school, BYU, do want a large and diverse student body purely for business reasons), then you need to let that diverse student body form the groups it wants to form to support the needs of different kinds of students. This is simply a matter of granting recognition, which comes with some (usually very small) stipend, the right to meet on campus, and the right to take part in student group recruiting on campus. It really shouldn’t matter if they’re at odds with the religion at the core of the University, as long as the University is accepting students of a variety of faiths (or none), then they ought to let those students associate officially. Now evangelical colleges may be another story, because the ones I think of, Liberty University, Bob Jones, etc., have no interest in diversity, or in being complete laughing stocks for their religious policies. So if Duquesne wants a reputation like Liberty, then by all means let them continue this policy. But if they want to be a respectable institution with a diverse student body, they should just let the group form.

Here are some student groups Duquesne might want to closely monitor to see if their activities adhere to the University Mission: 
http://www.duq.edu/greek-life/

Oh wait, I suppose drunken frat boy behavior is fine, as long as you go to confession in the morning.

Keep in mind that Duquesne currently recognizes a Muslim group, a Jewish group, and a gay-straight alliance as official groups.
But the atheist group is the one that crosses the line…? Right.

This is the same as at Notre Dame.

They figure approximately 25% of the troublemakers will have graduated by then.

Exactly.Maybe that’s why De Paul allows their group.

“Seriously, if you are interested in skepticism or atheism, why the heck did you go to a Catholic university? ”

Law school, business school, music school, pharmacy school, nursing school–Duquesne has all of these, very highly regarded in their (entirely secular) fields. This “private” university accepts millions in Federal money every year, not to mention Federal loan guarantees. As for Catholic donors being upset by groups opposed to their religion, remember that DU has a Muslim group already. Under Islam, Catholics are apostates. A university is no place for selective indignation or intellectual discrimination. DU’s position is morally indefensible.

If you are saying we should not be allowed to criticize them for their actions, then there is a lot you don’t get. They may have a right to disallow atheist groups, but this does not preclude them from criticism.

There is a distinction between what is legal and what is moral. This is the crux of the current furor over Joe Paterno. He may have fulfilled his minimal legal obligation by reporting an incident to his superior in the administration, but by not following up to see that any action was taken, nor going outside the university to report the incident to police, he allowed a child-raping monster to continue his child-raping activity for years more.

I don’t know anything about this school nor have I even heard of it but lets think about this with an open mind and without judgement for a second:

If an organization believes that certain actions are harmful to its members, is it within the rights of that organization to refrain from allowing such an activity?

Is it within the rights of an organization to attempt to retain the culture with which the organization was founded?

Do you really believe that the leadership are so evil at this school that they are preventing an action because they want to stifle an opponent? This sound like self-righteous judgment. Is it more likely that they are concerned for the student body and want to prevent behavior that they believe might be harmful.

Also, many comments suggest that the school wants to stifle skeptical and free thought. Again, this sounds light judgement. I’d be willing to bet that the school is not against critical thinking or skepticism and probably encourages it. The Catholic church, contrary to popular prejudices, has been a bastion of scientific thought and critical thinking throughout history.

Duquesne is the same school that sold off their NPR affiliated radio station, rather than broadcast programs that were sponsored in part by Planned Parenthood.

The music school is actually pretty third-rate, although they are rolling in bequests and such.

The university’s Catholic roots don’t determine it outright. I was recently accepted into DuQuesne’s MA program in philosophy, a school for which DuQuesne is regarded highly in the world of academic philosophy. My GPA was average, my letters were okay; it was my writing sample that carried me through. In case you were curious, said writing sample was about continental philosophy (think: Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger) and how it enables us to think the lived experience of sexual perversion (for which I cited Bataille). The whole project was carried out from a standpoint of absolute atheism (the existential variety, which is a far cry from the incessant regurgitations of enlightenment-era critiques that one finds in Dawkins, Hitchens, or indignant blogs like this). Neither my objectionable subject-matter nor my commitment to do philosophy after the death of God prevented me from getting accepted to the university. I would like to offer this fact before you all go crying out about how DuQuesne is an opponent of progress, reason, or thinking. 

I can’t speak for DuQuesne on this one, but the “free thought” movement has always seemed to be a bit ridiculous to me. The university’s philosophy program, for instance, is known first and foremost for its stature in the world of continental philosophy – a world which takes almost all of its cues from Nietzsche, perhaps the most completely atheist man to ever live. The university is officially catholic, sure, but to represent them as some monolithic institution of unreason is quite unreasonable. 

I am pleased to see that Duquesne at least still has some standard. However, this does make them look hypocritical in some ways in that they oppose a non-Christian atheist group but they still support non-Christian Muslim, homosexual, etc groups. We are a Catholic school and we must maintain our Catholic identity. Who says we are “required” to support all ideologies? We’re a private school, so we can do what we want. And, I certainly hope Duquesne does not go the way of Vanderbilt, Syracuse, etc. by being so accepting of other beliefs that they eventually become Christian in name only. I trust with Fr. Hogan at the helm, things will be in check for now; but we can still hope for improvement.

Duquesne Alumni
Class of 2011