And it came to pass that the Utah legislators voted in HB204, the “Higher Education Student Belief Accommodation” bill.

The bill requires university instructors under most circumstances to let students opt out of academic assignments that conflict with their religious or personal beliefs.

This is not a good idea. Gov. Spencer Cox should have rejected the bill. Legislators should repeal it at the next opportunity. Constituents should encourage them to do so. And, in the meantime, students should seek full education, not inappropriate excusals.

HB204 compromises academic integrity, as experiences with the University of Utah’s already existing but tamer content accommodation policy show.

Instructors in multiple U. departments repeatedly provide off-the-record content accommodations. In my home department of biomedical engineering, students have been directed to opt out of legitimate academic exercises without following the policy’s required procedures; for inappropriate rationales; and even when there is no appropriate alternative “for meeting the academic objectives of the course.”

As one biomedical engineering instructor rationalized their off-the-record accommodation to me and others: “The student was strongly opposed … it wasn’t worth the fight.”

Unfortunately, I’ve seen department and university administrators applaud such actions and pressure instructors to drop valid course requirements to accommodate students’ nonacademic beliefs.

To back up: In the beginning, then-student-actress Christina Axson-Flynn sued the U. on the grounds that being required to recite a script as written violated her religious beliefs.

Initially, the court ruled in favor of the U. and strongly affirmed instructors’ right to determine course requirements. Axson-Flynn appealed. Fearful of negative popular opinion, the U. caved, paid off Axson-Flynn and settled the case.

As part of that settlement, the U. instituted the nation’s first comprehensive “course-content accommodations” policy, described as “already 90% of the way” to HB204.

Present U. policy allows (but, unlike HB204, does not require) instructors to excuse students from valid academic requirements that conflict with or impose a burden on “the student’s sincerely-held core beliefs.”

The U.’s policy was controversial when first adopted. Then-president Michael Young dismissed one critic by saying that anyone “stupid enough” to claim the policy would grant students a veto on classroom content “hardly deserves a response.”

And yet, here we are. Granting students’ accommodation requests is now indeed required under HB204.

In science, deliberately ignoring data that conflict with your beliefs is called “fraud.”

The same is true in education.

Numerous scientific findings conflict with mainstream religious beliefs. Trees did not bear fruit on earth before the sun and stars existed, the Bible notwithstanding. Humans evolved from other species, creationism notwithstanding. And intercessory prayer does not cure terminal diseases, Catholic sainthood notwithstanding.

Religious conflicts with these findings are not appropriate grounds for voiding legitimate pedagogical requirements. Students should be required to articulate scientific and other positions, even if they conflict with their religious beliefs.

HB204 violates this straightforward principle.

As one telling example, the bill in effect mandates that accommodations be granted in “a debate class that asks a student to argue in favor of abortion.”

South African student John Smit would approve. Smit refused to answer an exam question regarding a Harry Potter novel “because it supports witchcraft, and we’re against witchcraft … the Bible is against witchcraft,” said Smit’s mother.

This is your brain on religion. And on HB204.

HB204 has it wrong.

The U.S. District Court’s initial summary judgment against Axson-Flynn got it right: “Were this a First Amendment violation, then a believer in ‘creationism’ could not be required to discuss and master the theory of evolution in a science class … [A] Catholic law student could not be required to make an argument in favor of capital punishment [or, presumably, abortion] during an in-class exercise designed to enable law students to argue cases they find unsympathetic.”

And this: “[L]earning in a University setting involves the ability to discuss and take on other points of view.”

Not avoid other points of view, simply because they conflict with a student’s own beliefs.

By its very nature, swapping in alternative exercises constitutes a “fundamental alteration” and a willful biasing of course content.

Utah’s state-funded universities are secular institutions. Their proper pedagogic role is to teach the full “universe” of academic subjects — not only the parts that agree with the revelations of the Prophet, Seer and Revelator.

As a matter of fairness, students of one religion (or none) should not be forced to complete assignments that students of another religion don’t have to.

But under HB204, that will occur.

Further, the world at large, including students’ future prospective employers, should be able to presume that a graduate has mastered a discipline as it exists — not one filtered through the lens of personal belief.

Under HB204, they can not.

The modern scientific method is successful because it requires considering and testing alternatives to one’s favored hypothesis.

Not avoiding them. Or rejecting them on the basis of faith.

That’s a worthwhile principle for any academic discipline.

HB204 notwithstanding.

Gregory A. Clark is an emeritus professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Utah. The views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily represent the university’s. To paraphrase former U. President Young: Anyone “stupid enough” to think otherwise “hardly deserves a response.”

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