“USA Today” has fired the editor who wrote a controversial column demanding that a Christian university be banned from the NCAA basketball tournament.
Hemal Jhaveri, who formerly worked as the race and inclusion editor at the paper’s sports media group, announced that she was “no longer employed at USA TODAY.” She was fired not because of the column but because of a tweet blaming “an angry white man” for the recent shootings in Boulder, Colo. The suspect is Muslim Syrian immigrant Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa. She actually said, “It’s always an angry white man, always.”
Jhaveri spent the rest of her post accusing her former employer and coworkers of racism, suggesting that “USA Today” acts as though it is “subservient to white authority.”
She also mentioned the column where she attacked what she called Oral Roberts University’s “anti-LGBTQ+ policy.” She slammed the school’s “values and beliefs” as “wholly incompatible with the NCAA’s own stated values of equality and inclusion.”
Jhaveri called on the NCAA to condemn ORU for its policies requiring students to refrain from homosexual activity, adding that “Any and all anti-LGBTQ+ language in any school’s policies should ban them from NCAA competition.” She accused the NCAA of allowing the university to “rewrite the narrative of their school.”
Jhaveri’s column caught the attention of Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who addressed her comments in his daily podcast “The Briefing.” Mohler described the column as “not only a secular indictment of one institution but rather an indictment of any Christian college, any Christian university, any institution, any chartered organization, any church and denomination that would dare to stand against … the tide of the moral revolution.”
ORU’s handbook says students should avoid “sexual promiscuity,” including “adultery, any homosexual behavior, premarital sex.”
“Certain behaviors are expressly prohibited in Scripture and therefore should be avoided by members of the University community,” the handbook says.
Referencing the school’s honor code banning homosexual activity as well as all sexual activity outside of marriage, Mohler asserted that “this is exactly the kind of student conduct statement, the kind of student honor code that you should expect in any legitimately Christian organization.”
Her comments were met with derision on social media.
One person on For the Win’s Facebook page called Jhaveri’s position “absolute discrimination” against those who “believe what the Word of God” says.
“And are you so naive to think that there are not other young men and young women playing on the other teams in these tournaments that believe the very same way because they too identify with Christ and were raised in a Godly home?” the person wrote.
“Author has first amendment protection to write whatever they want, but it sounds like Christophobic hate speech in this article,” another person wrote.
“If this was an Islamic fundamentalist University I doubt there would be an issue with this author, even though their views on homosexuality and women’s rights are far from ‘progressive,’” another person wrote.
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice
