Rejected Lesbian Dean Candidate: Marquette Asleep at the Switch for Over a Year

From the gay journal The Advocate, which managed to get some good inside information from Jodi O’Brien, who was offered the job of Arts & Science Dean but had it withdrawn.

O’Brien said Thursday that she had been previously recruited by a third-party firm for the same position in fall 2008. Despite being chosen for the short list of candidates, O’Brien declined the job for personal reasons in 2009, and the search was called off. Recruitment was then opened back up, and this time Marquette’s newly staffed selection committee approached O’Brien directly, asking her to reconsider, which she did. She said an offer was made to her in March, and by mid April she had accepted the position. But then she learned this week that the offer would be rescinded.

So O’Brien wasn’t merely somebody who snuck through. She was highly rated in 2008, and was “approached directly” (and not just through the university “headhunter”) in the current round of hiring.

But they only discovered in the last week that some of her writings make her unacceptable.