by Matthew Holloway | Aug 27, 2025 | Education, News
By Matthew Holloway |
Former University of Arizona (U of A) ethics professor Daniel Grossenbach is suing the school with the help of Liberty Counsel, after being fired for publicly advocating for his parental rights at Catalina Foothills School District (CFSD) meetings.
Grossenbach, a CFSD parent and resident, is the founding member of ‘Save CFSD,’ a “non-profit organization focused on educating parents about school board policies and issues and fundamental parental rights.” According to the lawsuit, he was “unceremoniously terminated” by U of A leaders, “at the demands of internet trolls’ intent on silencing his speech.”
In a press release issued Friday, Liberty Counsel announced the lawsuit on Grossenbach’s behalf. The Christian legal ministry explained, “In 2023, Grossenbach spoke several times at school board meetings, which [were] attended by hundreds of concerned parents, and delivered two-to-three-minute, pre-written speeches. He routinely included a disclaimer that he spoke for himself and not for his employer, and expressed without hate, slander, or violence how the district’s policies violated parental rights.
“The lawsuit then states that ‘anti-religious zealots turned digital critics’ coordinated over social media to silence Grossenbach and SaveCFSD by getting him fired from his job. Subsequently, numerous anonymous complaints were filed against him with the University of Arizona encouraging the university to discipline him for speaking out about his rights and beliefs.”
Liberty Counsel revealed, “In November 2023, the university informed him that it would not be renewing his part-time teaching contract for the following Spring ethics courses citing it had received funding for a full-time faculty member. However, the university never hired a full-time professor nor offered his ethics course the following Spring. In fact, the university posted advertisements soliciting resumes for additional part-time professors meeting Grossenbach’s exact skills and experience to teach similar courses he had been teaching for years.”
The attorneys argue that despite Grossenbach’s good performance and positive reputation, U of A terminated his employment “after discovering that he was an outspoken Christian advocating for change within his local school board to protect his family.” They claim the university subsequently stalled the disclosure of public records regarding his termination for 239 days in violation of Arizona law.
“[The University of Arizona’s] actions have inflicted irreparable damage to Professor Grossenbach’s professional career and reputation, ended his academic pursuit of a doctorate degree, decreased his earning potential, and reduced his income,” wrote Liberty Counsel. “Further, when Professor Grossenbach was terminated, he lost a potential textbook publishing deal, furthering his financial loss and reputational damage.”
According to the lawsuit, Grossenbach was terminated on November 30, 2024, after serving in his role for over three years “on the basis of complaints lodged by anonymous online censors targeting his constitutionally protected speech regarding his sincerely held religious beliefs, in his private capacity, separate and apart from the workplace.”
The professor filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and obtained a Notice of Right to Sue on May 25, 2025.
“Professors at public universities and colleges do not shed their constitutional rights to free speech and religious exercise when they work for a university,” said Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver. “Professor Daniel Grossenbach engaged in constitutionally protected speech, religious expression, and religious exercise and was speaking on matters of public concern regarding his faith, morality, and the community. The University of Arizona cannot fire a professor for his protected speech. Viewpoint discrimination is unlawful and violates the First Amendment and religious discrimination violates Title VII.”
Liberty Counsel is seeking a permanent injunction to declare the university’s Nondiscriminatory and Anti-Harassment Policy and Statement of Professional Conduct illegal and unlawful, along with compelling U of A “to reasonably accommodate the religious beliefs and practices of its employees.” The lawsuit also asks the court to reinstate Grossenbach to his former position, restore his benefits, and award damages.
Grossenbach’s efforts with ‘Save CFSD’ and exposure of controversial whistleblower audio released in May have been reported on by AZ Free News. The Professor also penned an op-ed on AZ Free News in October 2024 discussing his termination.
Matthew Holloway is a senior reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.
by Dan Grossenbach | Oct 4, 2024 | Opinion
By Dan Grossenbach |
Universities are free to adopt ethics contrary to constitutional values, but they aren’t free from the consequences. This is especially true when the University of Arizona hired me, a Christian apologist to teach government ethics, and then fired me on ethical grounds.
For the last four years, I taught college students the skills of effective moral decision making in a required course titled “Ethics for the Public Administrator.” The students come from majors like law, criminal justice, and political science—many becoming cops, lawyers, and bureaucrats. I have countless emails and evaluations praising me for offering something they never had before: deep thinking on moral issues.
Selecting course content wasn’t easy. At first, I was tempted to model my predecessors by surveying the most popular moral theories like utilitarianism, deontological ethics, virtue ethics, relativism, natural law, and divine command theory so students could select their preferred choice.
However, ethics isn’t something public administrators can choose. They are bound by an oath to protect and defend constitutional values which are based on biblical ethics. So, that’s what I taught.
While constitutional values are based on biblical values, they aren’t the same thing. There are some obligatory commands (loving God and making disciples) and prohibitions (idolatry, blasphemy) that apply only to those who accept biblical theology. However, all values in the Constitution can be traced back to some biblical principle. No other moral theory (or combination of theories) captures the totality of constitutional values like the Bible. This is probably why the Bible was far and away the most cited text by the Founding Fathers when the Constitution was written.
While I always avoided teaching theology in my classroom, part of me worried that administrators may confuse my teaching of biblical ethics with the teaching of biblical theology. Whether this ever was their concern remains a mystery since it wasn’t why I was fired.
To my own surprise, the department director didn’t mention anything about my beliefs or my class content but pointed instead to a financial reason for firing me. After thanking me for my good service to the students, she announced I was being terminated because an unexpected budget surplus allowed them to hire full time tenure track faculty to teach my course instead.
This would be a legitimate reason, if true, but it’s not. Around the same time, the U of A made headlines for just the opposite reason. Just two weeks earlier, the AP reported U of A disclosing a nearly quarter-billion-dollar funding crisis. Needless to say, this historic calamity didn’t cohere with the director’s claim of excess funding. So, I became suspicious and asked if there was anything else that weighed into her decision to fire me. She replied simply, “No, nothing more.”
Unconvinced, I filed a freedom of information request the next day. After a seven-month wait, I enlisted an attorney to compel the university to disclose the truth of what led to their decision. The disclosure showed administrators panicked by two anonymous letters from community members complaining about statements I made at a public school board meeting. The letters alleged that I criticized the LGBTQIA+ community and asked the university to punish me for violating the university’s “values.”
The first anonymous email was sent on October 12, 2023. That same day, a Facebook thread shows three people—a teacher, parent, and school board candidate—plotting to submit their complaint. This was followed two weeks later by a second anonymous email containing similar defamatory claims. This is the true reason I was fired.
No one ever cited evidence of these alleged statements, and the university never asked me about them. They simply ended my employment for constitutionally protected speech I’m accused of making outside of the workplace, and then they lied about the reason.
This problem is much bigger than me or any other persecuted U of A employee. The problem is that there is no longer any ethical standard employed by the university that’s consistent with constitutional values. As I said at the beginning, they are free to embrace another morality, but not free from the consequences.
The university suppresses speech outside the workplace and lies about it. If this behavior accurately reflects the university’s values, we may wonder what kind of ethics they base all other decisions. If not constitutional ethics, what model will they use to operate their institution? Furthermore, what kind of moral system will they teach to future public administrators now that professors teaching constitutional ethics are not allowed? It’s a scary thought.
Dan Grossenbach is a 20-year federal criminal investigator, state-certified educator, husband, dad, patriot, and Jesus-follower in Tucson, AZ. You can follow him on X here.
by Daniel Stefanski | Aug 12, 2024 | Education, News
By Daniel Stefanski |
A new leader has been selected for one of Arizona’s major universities.
On Friday, the University of Arizona and the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) announced that Dr. Suresh Garimella had been appointed as the school’s 23rd president.
Dr. Garimella is currently the president of the University of Vermont, and he was previously at Purdue University as its Executive Vice President for Research and Partnerships.
The incoming president’s career fate was sealed with a unanimous vote from the members of ABOR.
“I am honored to be chosen by the board as the next president of the University of Arizona,” said Dr. Garimella. “I have long admired the U of A and its stature in the state of Arizona and far beyond. The institution demonstrates the best qualities of a land-grant university with exceptional leadership in research and health sciences, highly acclaimed faculty and staff, and a diverse student population comprised of the best and brightest from around the world. There are tremendous opportunities in front of us and I look forward to collaborating with U of A students, faculty, staff and alumni to build upon our strengths as an institution and continue to lead in excellence here in Tucson and around the world.”
“Dr. Garimella is student-focused and considers himself first and foremost a faculty member. With a 35-year career in higher education, Suresh is engaging, a great listener and a collaborative leader,” said ABOR Chair Cecilia Mata. “Wildcats are part of our state’s DNA and Dr. Garimella has shown he is the right leader at the right time to heal and grow Arizona’s land-grant university.”
Dr. Robert C. Robbins currently serves as the university’s president, which he has held since 2017. Earlier this spring, Robbins announced his plans to step away from the school at the end of – or before – his term in office.
“I join our University of Arizona family in welcoming Dr. Garimella to Tucson,” said President Robbins. “His experience as a president at a public university and as an esteemed professor, researcher and published author will serve him well in his new role. In the weeks ahead, I look forward to partnering with Dr. Garimella and assisting him with the transition in any way possible. The U of A will be in good hands for years to come.”
According to the press release issued by the Arizona Board of Regents, “Dr. Garimella received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, his M.S. from The Ohio State University, and his bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
by Staff Reporter | Jun 9, 2024 | Education, News
By Staff Reporter |
The University of Arizona (UArizona) has gone back to the basics — way back, in fact: one course fulfilling the university’s mandatory diversity & equity (D&E) curriculum requires students to play pretend as bugs.
The Goldwater Institute, a libertarian public policy think tank in Phoenix, discovered that a UArizona course fulfilling the diversity and equity requirement directs students to experiment with “living like a bug” by wearing tissue paper “wings” as they walk around, an exercise meant to provide symbolic understanding of the experience of others from different races, social classes, or physical or intellectual abilities.
Additionally, students engaging in this play pretend of bug life must submit a written reflection on the “assumptions that inform popular attitudes toward insects” and then identify “ways that attitudes of othering interfere with self-identity and foster systems of privilege or oppression/marginalization.”
The course, Entomology 106D1, is marketed as assessing the impact of insects on human history, including human inequities, cultural diversity, and new ways of understanding sexuality.
“Bugs have built and destroyed human empires, aided our advances, propelled our catastrophes, and exacerbated our inequities. We learn how arthropods have shaped human history and cultural diversity, improved our health, wealth, and art, and continue to teach us new ways to understand human nature, sexuality, intelligence, and even how to approach \”alien\” ideas,” reads the course description.
The course is part of a track to earning an undergraduate certificate in entomology and insect science.
Insect play pretend isn’t the only option for UArizona students to fulfill their required D&E credits. As Goldwater Institute noted in their vast report, other courses offer different learning opportunities to fulfill diversity and equity requirements.
An anthropology course on race, ethnicity, and the American Dream instructs students to learn how the U.S. is deeply embedded with racism — systemic — through its history, society, and institutions. The course declares that only white people can attain the American Dream because they “hold unearned privilege,” unlike people of color.
In order to remedy the proposed inequities, the course then directs students to learn about different reparations plans.
Another course, “Constructions of Gender,” offered students extra credit to undergo training at an LGBTQ center on campus, or to attend an allyship development training.
UArizona quantified valid D&E courses as those which center on one or more marginalized populations in the course content, such as racial or ethnic minorities, women, LGBTQIA+ people, economically marginalized communities, and disabled people; explore historical developments, causes, and consequences of structured inequality; and examine how power, privilege, and positionality shape systems related to the discipline of the course and how knowledge is constructed.
Valid D&E courses, according to the university, shape the student to understand which historical and contemporary populations have experienced inequality — specifically, racial and ethnic minorities, women, LGBTQIA+ people, disabled people, the marginalized, the socioeconomically disadvantaged, and those from colonized societies — and how various communities experience privilege and/or oppression or marginalization.
At the end of their D&E courses, students must be able to theorize the means to creating a more equitable society.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
by Elizabeth Troutman | May 10, 2024 | News
By Elizabeth Troutman |
Congressional candidate and University of Arizona law school professor Kirsten Engel has refused to stand by Israel as her alma maters, Northwestern University and Brown University, blow up with antisemitic protests, a new report shows.
“Kirsten Engel is not a fighter for Arizona, she is a scared politician who is too afraid of the extreme left to speak up against antisemitism,” National Republican Congressional Committee Spokesperson Ben Petersen said in a statement.
Engel has “been silent in the face of protests taking place at their alma mater.”
Engel is running to represent Arizona’s sixth district. She is a former legislator, Charles E. Ares Professor of Law at the James E. Rogers College of Law, and an environmental lawyer.
She received her undergraduate degree from Brown and her J.D. from Northwestern.
Students at Northwestern set up an encampment on school grounds to demand the administration divest from Israel. Terrorist sympathizers even became violent with police officers.
At Brown, students also set up a pro-Palestine encampment, which they agreed to clear April 30.
Students across the country are skipping classes and final exams to protest on behalf of Hamas-controlled Palestine.
At Columbia University, students took over Hamilton Hall overnight, barricading themselves inside. At the University of Texas, more than 80 arrests have occurred.
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
