Imagine taking a course and being forced to contribute $99 to an organization secretly controlled by your professor, who then used the proceeds to fund causes like Planned Parenthood and other organizations with the intent to “coordinate our efforts to burn everything to the f***ing ground.”

If you are a conservative or pro-life student, you would be very pissed off. At a minimum, the professor committed fraud–she had presented the contribution as a necessary fee to gain access to an online space to be used for educational purposes–and by any reasonable measure, she coerced students to contribute to causes they find morally offenses, violating their religious freedom.

Professor Amy Wisner compelled each of her nearly 600 students to pay a $99 membership fee to join an outside leftist political-advocacy organization she controlled. | @LathanWatts https://t.co/iYky6P0DHJ

— National Review (@NRO) June 21, 2023

All this happened at Michigan State University, a publicly funded school, and apparently, the administration was aware that it was going on. The Alliance Defending Freedom is suing on behalf of students to claw back the money.

The lawsuit explains that Wisner designed her course to promote her political views. On her syllabus under “course requirements,” she required students to purchase “The Rebellion Community membership.” As the syllabus explained, “The Rebellion Community . . . is a global social learning community with a private space dedicated to this course.” Once students paid the $99 subscription fee online, they saw a statement that said:

“Your membership fees are used to (1) pay for use of the technology and (2) pay guest speakers, educators, and facilitators. Your professor does not receive any financial compensation from your membership fees as that would be a conflict of interest.”

The lawsuit notes, however, that Wisner personally controlled the group and was using the substantial funds she extracted — nearly $60,000 — to engage in political speech and donate to advocacy groups that directly conflict with the religious beliefs of Barbieri and Radomski. For example, in a Facebook post, Wisner linked to a Facebook page associated with “The Rebellion Community” and wrote, “The Rebellion community is a safe place to coordinate our efforts to burn everything to the f***ing ground.” Wisner’s post also said, “100% of membership fees are donated to Planned Parenthood,” though elsewhere she stated that “Proceeds of The Rebellion Community membership fees are donated to organizations fighting systemic oppression.”

Michigan State has reimbursed the students for the “fee,” but that isn’t the point. The organizations to which the students unwillingly and unwittingly donated have retained the contributions, so in effect, they have contributed to Planned Parenthood and God knows who else, and have been reimbursed by the university. In a very real sense, if the university claims that the students have been reimbursed for their contribution, Michigan State itself has contributed to these organizations itself.

[T]here was no apparent functional advantage to using the Rebellion Community’s website. MSU’s online platform for course materials—used by most of the university’s professors—could have hosted course material just as well as Professor Wisner’s platform.

Professor Wisner claimed in one Facebook post that 100 percent of membership fees were donated to Planned Parenthood. In other posts, she indicated that funds were also used for other forms of political activism. But in any case, Professor Wisner dishonestly took money from her students and used it to push her own political ideology.

The First Amendment prohibits government officials, including professors at public universities, from forcing people to financially support causes that contradict their beliefs. Professor Wisner ignored that fact and forced students to support her political views, all while lying to them about where their money was going.

The university has attempted to avoid accountability for this violation by placing Professor Wisner on leave and crediting students enrolled in the course with $99 on their university accounts. But this does not stop the professor from using the money she gathered to push political causes that students like Nathan, Nolan, and hundreds of others may disagree with, and it doesn’t stop other professors from pulling similar stunts in the future.

ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit in May 2023 to hold Professor Wisner and officials at Michigan State University accountable for violating the First Amendment.

By any reasonable measure, this should be considered fraud as well as a violation of the students’ First Amendment rights to religious freedom. That the university and the professor perpetrated this fraud is shocking enough–that the fraud was committed to benefit the professor’s own political beliefs only makes it worse.

How often do similar things happen? It’s hard to say. What we do know is that professors are increasingly letting their own freak flags fly, using their often state-funded platforms to promote their own political causes and to punish students for not sharing their own views.

Academia is corrupt, and yet it is one of the industries most subsidized by the government. Republicans for too long have accepted the Democrats’ argument that college educations provide a necessary public service that increases American productivity. But in many cases, they exist primarily to “burn everything to the f**king ground.”

No more. STEM departments should be stripped from public institutions and established as separate colleges and universities, Left-wing ideologues should be held in check (not dismissed, but their work should be monitored for political or ideological bias) at those schools, and the social sciences and liberal arts institutions that are left should be forced to compete for students without public funding.

This will never happen, of course. But it should. Publicly fund the economically valuable subjects, and allow students pursuing other subjects to pay for the education themselves.