Associate Dean Wrote Women Shouldn't Wear Pants

The University of Oklahoma has announced that Brian McCall has left his position as associate dean at the law school "voluntarily" but that a review by the university found no evidence that he engaged in workplace harassment or discrimination. The review followed a report in The Oklahoma Daily, the student newspaper, about McCall's book, To Build the City of God: Living as Catholics in a Secular Age. In the book, he wrote that “women must veil their form to obscure its contours out of charity towards men… To know that women in pants have this effect on men and to wear them is thus a sin against charity as well as modesty.” He extended this idea to women's activities, writing that “if there is something really impossible to do in a skirt, does this not indicate this is an activity inappropriate for a woman to perform?”

Joseph Harroz Jr., dean of the law school, posted an announcement on Twitter Tuesday in which he said he had held off on commenting on the McCall book, pending the review by the university. With that review completed, he said, he could say that he does not agree with McCall. He said that the law school was "a place of inclusion" where all kinds of students are encouraged to thrive.