Coercing Conscience: the Myth of Religiously Neutral Public Schools and Universities

Richard Baer's Roundtable presentation will (a) describe how public schools and universities routinely indoctrinate students in moral relativism, in various forms of egoistic hedonism, in anti-Christian views of human freedom, and in other beliefs and values that compete with and undermine Christian faith; (b) make the case that insofar as public schools and universities in the United States today violate both the free exercise and the non-establishment clauses of the First Amendment and thus ought to be considered fundamentally unconstitutional; and (c) explore ways that we as a society might more equitably organize and fund education.

Dr. Baer is professor emeritus in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, where from 1974-2004 he taught environmental ethics. For most of his years at Cornell his course Religion, Ethics, and the Environment was basically the only ethics course at the university that included a significant component of normative Christian and Jewish ethics. Professor Baer holds a degree in theology from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in the History and Philosophy of Religion.

His presentation will draw heavily on his more than 30 years teaching Cornell undergraduate and graduate students, and as in every Roundtable ample time will be included for discussion, questions, and comments following Dr. Baer's formal presentation.