Fundraising Support for Susannah Bartlow

For those who have not been following this blog, Susannah Bartlow is the former director of the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center at Marquette, who was summarily fired when it was found that she had approved a large mural on the wall of the Center honoring cop killer and terrorist Assata Shakur.

A fund raising effort on her behalf can be found here:

http://www.gofundme.com/susannahbartlow

The appeal starts with some silly statements:

On Monday, May 18th, Dr. Susannah Bartlow was fired as Director of the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center at Marquette University. She was fired suddenly and swiftly, without input from the GSRC Advisory Committee, after pouring her heart and soul into bringing excellent programming to Marquette over the last three years. She was fired seemingly for doing her job: providing a safe space for students to express themselves and engage in thoughtful dialogue (more information below).

No, the purpose of the Center was to promote a gay lifestyle, and push leftist political causes, as its Facebook page shows.

But then, we get some new and rather disturbing information:

When she was fired, Susannah was not offered any severance. She was paid only through her last day of work on May 18th, and was not expecting, at that moment in her professional life, to face the job market. Additionally, when she was terminated on May 18th, Susannah had already missed the 2015-2016 hiring cycle for positions in higher education. She continues to contribute to her community by accepting a temporary position at Pathfinders in Milwaukee, which pays a modest hourly income, but it is going to be hard to make ends meet and cover some of the basics, including health insurance. Her friends, colleagues and well-wishers ask that you consider donating to a fund to support Susannah as she transitions into a new (permanent) professional role. We want to give her the time to find the right placement for herself. Please consider donating; even a small amount helps. Funds will be used to cover her living expenses, health insurance, and any legal fees associated with an unemployment claim. Susannah has also pledged to donate any funds above our goal to Pathfinders and plans to blog about what’s going on in her life, especially related to job searches, work at Pathfinders, and writing projects on a weekly Wednesday blog called Work in Progress.

So how do we feel about this?

We are actually hoping that the campaign raises the target amount ($3,800) for Bartlow. Yes, she is a leftist extremist (as her blog posts about Shakur show) and should never have been hired as a director of any program at Marquette.

But we have seen no evidence that she ever concealed or misrepresented her political views when interviewing for the position. And indeed, Marquette seems to have approved (if only through inattention) of her leftist activism in the position (with Femsex being a large exception).

That being the case, Marquette owed her a reasonable severance package. We won’t contribute, although only because we would accused of some nefarious purpose if we did so. But we think certain Marquette administrators should step up and see that this campaign reaches the goal.

Dan Maguire Comments

Among those who commented and gave a relatively generous gift ($200) was Dan Maguire, who said:

Another example of heavy-handed non-collegial authoritarianism in the Lovell administration. Another example of the lack of appropriate faculty participation in university governance as recommended by the AAUP and other academic agencies.

Maguire is making a principled argument here, although it’s one to which we have never been sympathetic. It has always sounded to us a bit like wanting the inmates to run the asylum. This has been especially true given that the “faculty” who want to participate in “governance” have been a highly self-selected bunch of activists.

But then, what about the case where the people supposed to be running the asylum are corrupt?

Marquette has not had a president whom we could respect since John Raynor, who served from 1965 until 1990.

In this case, however, we don’t think Marquette had any choice but to take the mural down, and to fire Bartlow. Had the issue of the mural been opened up for “discussion” with some faculty defending it, and others (probably many fewer, since conservative professors keep their heads down) opposing it, the public relations fallout would have been monumental. Unlike in academia, in American society as a whole murdering cops is not only viewed as evil, it’s not even viewed as something that can be defended.