The sociology department at Brooklyn College earlier this month elected as its chairman one Timothy Shortell. That means that Professor Shortell will have an advisory role, and thus a bully pulpit, to pronounce on every candidate up for tenure at the college, which is part of the City University of New York.

Readers of these columns may recall that Mr. Shortell was in the news back in 2003 for having written and published an article asserting that “those who are religious are incapable of moral action” and describing the faithful as “moral retards.” Wrote Mr. Shortell, “Can there be any doubt that humanity would be better off without religion? Everyone who appreciates the good, the true and the beautiful has a duty to challenge this social poison at every opportunity. It is not enough to be irreligious; we must use our critique to expose religion for what it is: sanctimonious nonsense.”

No doubt emboldened by a Brooklyn College spokeswoman who said at the time, “That’s what academic freedom in this country is all about, being able to express your opinions,” Mr. Shortell has continued to share his opinions on a Web site he maintains that prominently mentions his Brooklyn College affiliation and that he links to from the course Web site that his students use in a course he teaches. “Someone really ought to do a comparative study of this administration and the propaganda techniques of Nazi Germany. Karl Rove owes a lot to Joseph Goebbels,” he writes. Of America, he writes, “Just as any fascist state, the megalomania of the ruling elite is paid for in working class blood.”

Mr. Shortell has tenure, and he is covered by the same First Amendment the rest of us are covered by. But how could someone who compares Karl Rove’s tactics to those of Goebbels or deems people of faith “moral retards” possibly be fair in evaluating the tenure candidacies of an Orthodox Jew, or an observant Catholic, or a supporter of the Bush administration?

A spokesman for the college tells us that Mr. Shortell, as a department chairman, will only have an advisory role in the college’s multistage tenure process. The spokesman notes that the final authority for granting tenure rests with the president and trustees. While that may be technically true, Chairman Shortell still will exercise informal influence on his department. Given that sociology departments aren’t exactly known for being friendly to conservatives to begin with, we have to wonder whether having someone like Mr. Shortell at the helm will really help foster a more balanced academic climate.

Under the college’s by laws, Brooklyn College’s president, Christoph Kimmich, has the authority to overturn the election, in the best interests of the college. Will he act? Or, more important, will he be pressured by the CUNY trustees to act? As we’ve argued in respect of the situation at Columbia, the trustees of a university – the university itself as an incorporated body – also have rights under the Constitution, not to mention, in the case of trustees, fiduciary responsibilities under the law to ensure the protection of religious students. By acting to ensure that the chairman of a department is one who can take a nondiscriminatory position on religious students the trustees would be exercising their rights and protecting the good name of the university that reposes in them their trust.