D&I furore | Workers sacked after including gender pronouns in their email signatures

A pair of university employees were sacked after refusing to remove gender pronouns from their email signatures.

Houghton University, a Christian higher education facility in New York, has come under fire after dismissing Raegan Zelaya and Shua Wilmot, two residence hall directors who used ‘she/her’ and ‘he/him’ identifiers in their respective emails.

In the dismissal letter to Zelaya, which has been widely circulated online, the school said it had sacked her “as a result of your refusal to remove pronouns in your email signature”.

A spokesperson for the university told The New York Times that the organisation “has never terminated an employment relationship based solely on the use of pronouns in staff email signatures,” explaining: “Over the past years, we’ve required anything extraneous be removed from email signatures, including Scripture quotes.”