Former History Professor John Rooney Forced to Leave Marquette

John William Rooney, a former member of the Marquette History faculty, has been in trouble with the law. According to the Journal-Sentinel:

In the late 1980s, a history professor from Marquette University named John William Rooney walked into the French National Archives in Paris and walked out with a copy of the 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau, a woven paper with red wax seals and a green silk cord through which Napoleon Bonaparte agreed to give up the French empire and accept exile.

[. . .]

In 2002, a federal court in New York convicted Rooney of conspiracy to transport stolen property after his friend, Marshall Lawrence Pierce, put the treaty up for auction. Rooney was placed on probation and ordered to pay a fine. The American Embassy in France returned the document to the archives.

We have now confirmed, from a source close to the History Department during the time that Rooney left Marquette, that Rooney was in fact forced out. He was presented with a letter of resignation and required to sign it.

Since this was before his theft of the document was discovered, the theft was apparently not the cause of his de facto firing.