Arizona State University formally reprimanded a philosophy professor for asking his students what Aristotle called the central question of ethics: "What is the highest good?"
The question has been foundational to Western philosophy for 2,400 years. At ASU in 2026, it's evidence of religious bias.
Professor Owen Anderson teaches in ASU's School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies. After students filed complaints about his philosophy courses, School Director Miriam Mara issued a formal reprimand. The complaints centered on Anderson asking about the "highest good" — a concept at the core of Western philosophy since ancient Greece — and teaching how St. Thomas Aquinas would approach philosophical questions in a course called Religions of the World.
One student told investigators: "Although I agree with what Owen Anderson teaches, I completely understand if people feel offended." Another complained that "grades are based on using the term 'god' and thus having the correct religious view."
Mara's response was to tell Anderson to find a way to address the concerns. In other words: stop making students engage with uncomfortable ideas.
What the university's own evaluation data showed told a different story. Anderson's two sections of Religions of the World scored 4.7 out of 5 and 4.45 out of 5. His Introduction to Ethics pulled a 4.2. One course — Issues in Death and Dying — scored 3.38, which Mara described as "well-below the college mean." Three out of four courses had strong marks. One mediocre score and a handful of complaints earned him a formal reprimand.
Anderson appealed to Dean Todd Sandrin of the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences — the final level of appeal within ASU. He told The College Fix, "I believe this is overt discrimination against me," and asked a question the university has not answered: "Do they also ask critical race theory professors to stop teaching that view?"
Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, said he was "puzzled that the University seems to have done nothing to determine whether the complaints were valid." Wood noted that "bias" implies Anderson was granting "special favor to his own views" — but teaching Aquinas in a philosophy course is the syllabus, not a slant.
Among the materials flagged as problematic: a true-or-false exam question reading, "Death should not make us think about life." The question appeared in Issues in Death and Dying.
Anderson already has a separate pending lawsuit against ASU over mandatory DEI training. The university had motivation to find something — and a handful of complaints about ancient philosophy apparently was enough.
Plato asked about the highest good. Aristotle built an ethical framework around it. Thomas Aquinas spent his life on it. At Arizona State, asking students to engage with the same question is now a punishable offense — and the professor asking it already has one lawsuit pending against the school that punished him.