University of Dallas will not take action against professor who denounced transgender Biden nominee

University of Dallas officials said they will not take action against a professor who wrote a Facebook post denouncing a transgender woman who is the Biden administration’s nominee for assistant health secretary.

The controversy began when David Upham, an associate professor who is chairman of the school’s politics department and director of legal studies, wrote in a now-deleted post that Rachel Levine “put on a somewhat convincing hormonal costume to go along with his conventionally feminine dress,” according to a report in the campus paper, The University News.

Upham continued, writing, “Dr. Levine, in concert with the whole Biden administration will try to use the powers of the federal government to FORCE others, by their words and their deed, including their medical expertise and know-how — to participate in these falsehoods, these hormonal and surgical harms — these wrongs.”

The private Catholic university in Irving released a joint letter from President Thomas Hibbs and Provost Jonathan Sanford, the incoming president, after a transgender graduate circulated a petition calling for Upham’s removal.

The leaders said that they would not yield to “external demands” and that the school is “not in the business of limiting the speech of our faculty and staff when they speak on personal social media sites.” They also reinforced the school’s commitment to the Catholic Church and its teachings.

“The university embraces unreservedly the Church’s articulation of the moral law, including its articulation of those truths that deal with the embodied nature of the human person and human sexuality,” they wrote.

Levine, who was nominated last month, has served as Pennsylvania’s health secretary since 2017. If confirmed, she would make history as the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The petition to remove Upham was started by Bethany Beeler and signed by 66 alumni, according to The University News.

Beeler wrote that the professor’s description of transgender people promotes prejudice and violence and that he “possesses a bully pulpit financed and abetted by UD’s continued employment of him,” The University News reported.

“Is this the kind of behavior and person UD wants to place in front of children growing into young adults?” she wrote.

A counter-petition defended Upham as an educator, a mentor and a Catholic and asked signers to reaffirm the university’s Catholic identity to protect it “from those who claim to love her yet strive to change her,” according to The University News.

In a follow-up Facebook post, Upham defended his position and said his job was not in jeopardy, the paper reported.

Others across the country have received backlash for their comments about Levine, including a Pennsylvania official who apologized for a Facebook post mocking the nominee, and the Catholic World Report, a publication that had its Twitter account locked following a tweet critical of her nomination.