01-3002 Linnemeir, et al. v. Board of Trustees of Purdue University, et al.

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“[W]e do not mean to deny the pain that a play such as Corpus Christi inflicts on believing Christians (and not only on them) or to suggest that its author ranks with the nonbelieving giants of our cultural tradition. The fact that the play has been published, and ran in New York, will not immunize it from charges that it is a typical product of the lunatic cultural Left. The conservative cultural historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, in her book One Nation, Two Cultures (1999), brackets Corpus Christi with a sitcom in which Abraham Lincoln and his wife make sexual overtures to the same black man and with “‘whiteness studies’ (which celebrate ‘white trash’ and expose the inherent racism in being white).” Id. at 127-28, 132. But the quality or lack thereof of Corpus Christi and other postmodernist provocations is a matter for the state university, not for federal judges, to determine, as would be obvious if a parent were complaining that in a course on the Bible the teacher had used a poor translation. Academic freedom … and states’ rights, alike demand deference to educational judgments that are not invidious; for, to repeat, the university has been scrupulous in publicly disclaiming that by exhibiting Corpus Christi it is allying itself with the enemies of Christianity.”

Motion for stay denied.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Lee, J., Posner, J.