Professor Naberhaus asked me to share the following statement regarding his plans and recent events:

Having been reinstated as a member of the Mount St. Mary’s faculty, I have decided to return to the classroom beginning tomorrow. For my 8:00 a.m. lecture class I will be teaching on the scheduled topic, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in which Plato presents his radical notion that education is not a matter of filling the mind with knowledge, but of turning the soul toward Truth.

My return to teaching has nothing to do with accepting the “mercy” of President Newman. (It should be remembered that the charges against me still have not been specified.) Rather, I am returning for my students, who were left without a replacement for me last week. My aim in returning is the same as my aim in teaching generally: to deepen the hunger for truth in my students.

I have invited my colleagues at the Mount and other universities to join me in solidarity by exploring, in whatever way they deem appropriate, similar themes in their classes this week.

I am grateful to many people for their continued support–of me, and more importantly of the principles of academic freedom and the sober, fearless pursuit of truth.