Barely Making It

Do Black Lives Matter to “Black Lives Matter”?

From National Review, a discussion of the recent dismissal of charges against cop Edward Nero in Baltimore. Key part of the article:

We are now more than one year removed from Gray’s death. In that time, hundreds more black men have died in the course of dramatic crime spikes in major American cities. At the same time, in many of those same cities, police have made fewer arrests, executed fewer stops, and confiscated fewer weapons. At least one prominent skeptic is now asserting that the so-called “Ferguson effect” is the “leading hypothesis” to explain the crime surge, and statistical site FiveThirtyEight has done more than anyone to document its existence in Chicago.

There is a chance that the Nero verdict will strike at least a small blow for sanity and reason, but it’s more likely that the outcome will cause Black Lives Matter and its sympathizers to redouble their efforts. As soon as the decision came down, there was an ugly scene outside the courthouse in Baltimore as protesters chased and surrounded Nero’s family — people unquestionably innocent of any wrongdoing.

No one believes that every single police officer is a person of integrity. And certainly no one with any sense believes that all police are law-abiding. When there is probable cause to believe that an officer has committed a crime, they should face prosecution to the same extent as any other citizen. But when politicians respond to riots with indictments — and then when activists respond to acquittals with chants of “no justice, no peace” — it is certainly understandable that police feel besieged.

Black Lives Matter activists and their white-progressive enablers seem not to care. In the rough calculus of social justice, it appears that lives taken by civilians matter far less than lives taken by police, and if hundreds more have to die to save the few, then so be it. After all, isn’t there an old saying about omelettes and eggs that applies?

Officer Nero rightly walks free. Now would be the ideal time to rethink the anti-police witch-hunt, but I won’t hold my breath. The narrative of police oppression is too fixed in the leftist mind, and progressive elites still have too much to gain by keeping it that way.

Black Lives Matter, quite simply, only seems to care about the lives of blacks shot by cops. And it doesn’t seem to matter to them whether the cop was at fault or not. He’s white, therefore, he’s guilty.

Quite simply, these race hustlers would rather have a series of grievances than to save black lives. Black lives only matter to them if their loss promotes a political agenda.

And who is the judge who let Nero off, rejecting the unfounded theory under which he was prosecuted? His name is Barry Williams. Not all black folks are race hustlers.

Gender and Tolerance

Transgenders on the Victim Bandwagon

The latest entry in the left’s ever expanding list of groups who need to be petted, pandered to and catered to is transgender people.

Transgender speakers are hot on the college lecture circuit, and the latest “inclusion” fad on college campuses is “gender neutral” bathrooms and dorms.

And worse, the Obama Justice Department is trying to force the transgender agenda on the entire nation’s schools.

With transgender people (and with gays and every other politically correct victim group) the left uses the word “tolerance.” If you oppose their agenda, it’s only because you are “intolerant” or a “bigot” and even a “homophobe.”

Tolerance ought to be a two way street. But today’s Social Justice Warriors see no need for tolerance toward people who disagree with them.

Let’s take Bruce Jenner, for example. He has decided he’s a woman. He’s had some plastic surgery so that his features are a bit more feminine. And he wears dresses. Tolerance says he had a right to do all of that.

But tolerance says that I have a right to view him as a male transvestite, who is a bit odd. Anybody who says I have no right to think that is intolerant of me. Jenner has a right to his opinion as to his gender, I have an equal right to my opinion about his gender. Equal tolerance.

Social Justice Warriors: Equal Tolerance?

Of course, a Social Justice Warrior might insist that he has a right to view me as a bad person because I think that. He does indeed, but if he tries to bully me by calling me a “bigot” or “intolerant” he is no better than I would be if I bullied a gay person by calling him a “pervert” or “degenerate.”

Further, if the Social Justice Warrior has a right to view me as a bad person because of my opinions, I have an equal right to judge the opinions and the actions of others. I have a right to decide that (for example) homosexual acts are sinful, or that guys wearing a dress are weird.

But of course, Social Justice Warriors deride “judgmental” attitudes on the part of people with whom they disagree, while being rigidly judgmental toward those same people. They seem to think they have a monopoly on passing moral judgment.

Things get worse when people try to impose their ideas about sex and gender on others. Does “tolerance” mean that a person who looks like a man gets to use the ladies room? What about tolerance of women who would feel that to be a huge imposition on their sense of privacy? Why does the person who looks like a man want to use the ladies room? Probably because he wants affirmation of his gender identity.

Demanding Affirmation

But demanding that others affirm one’s idea that one is really a woman (while one looks like a man and was born a male) is a demand one has no right to make. You have a right to think you are “really” a woman. I have a right to think you are really a man, and so do the women who feel violated if you are in their restroom.

And it’s even worse if in public schools a kid with a penis is allowed to run naked in the girl’s locker room, as the Obama Administration has demanded.

Which shows how using government to force your notions of sex and gender on others is downright toxic.

Private Sector over Governmental Fiat

Left to the private sector, things are likely to work out in a messier, but ultimately more satisfactory way. Big box store Target can declare its restrooms gender neutral if it wants. People who are uncomfortable with that are free to shop elsewhere. That’s tolerance.

While nobody should be forced to accommodate the desires of transgender people, some firms may choose to, just as some restaurants might choose to accommodate vegans. But the accommodations are likely to be more moderate than Target’s. Having single use bathrooms (one user at a time) is not outrageous, since people are used to that after decades of air travel. Likewise, no transgender person should mind using the “family” restrooms, since those are inherently gender neutral (intended for a dad and small daughter, or mother and young son, for example). And expensive reconfigurations of facilities are unlikely, just as vegan restaurants are uncommon.

Gay Lobby and Hypocrisy of “Tolerance”

Issues of tolerance and intolerance have been even worse where homosexuality is concerned. Government has punished Christian bakers who did not want to bake a cake for gay wedding and photographers who did not want to photograph a gay wedding. Christian student groups have been told they may not insist that their officers adhere to Christian standards of sexual behavior. The gay lobby has been willing to use government to impose their notions of what is moral on people who disagree.

On the average college campus, saying something negative about homosexuality invites a lecture from your dorm resident assistant, or being bullied by the Bias Incident Response Team.

If the Westboro Baptist Church asked a gay baker to cater one of its events, nobody would think of trying to force him to do so. If the Muslim Student Association had an officer who started loudly insisting that Mohammad was a fraud and a child molester, the Social Justice Warriors would be happy to see that officer kicked out. But Muslims vote Democratic, and can be portrayed as a victim group.

Saying something unkind about Christians on a college campus would hardly raise an eyebrow.

Tolerance is only tolerance if it works both ways. Wanting tolerance for one’s own opinions and own favored groups is not tolerance. Every bigot wants that. The test is one’s willingness to tolerate people and opinions one dislikes. This is a test the left in America flunks badly.

[By John McAdams, Reprinted from The Madison Speakeasy, Volume 1, Number 2]

Forget It, Kid

GLENN MCCOY © Belleville News-Democrat. Dist. By UNIVERSAL UCLICK. Reprinted
with permission. All rights reserved.

American Indians: “Redskins” Team Name Not Offensive

All the politically correct types are demanding that the Washington Redskins change the name of their team. It’s “offensive,” they say.

But a new Washington Post polls says otherwise.

The headline says “New poll finds 9 in 10 Native Americans aren’t offended by Redskins name.”

The race hustlers claiming to represent the Indians reacted badly.

But Suzan Harjo, the lead plaintiff in the first case challenging the team’s trademark protections, dismissed the Post’s findings.

“I just reject the results,” said Harjo, 70, who belongs to the Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee tribes. “I don’t agree with them, and I don’t agree that this is valid way of surveying public opinion in Indian Country.”

But the Post explained:

Across every demographic group, the vast majority of Native Americans say the team’s name does not offend them, including 80 percent who identify as politically liberal, 85 percent of college graduates, 90 percent of those enrolled in a tribe, 90 percent of non-football fans and 91 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 39.

Even 9 in 10 of those who have heard a great deal about the controversy say they are not bothered by the name.

What makes those attitudes more striking: The general public appears to object more strongly to the name than Indians do.

In a 2014 national ESPN poll, 23 percent of those reached called for “Redskins” to be retired because of its offensiveness to Native Americans — more than double the 9 percent of actual Native Americans who now say they are offended by it.

A 2013 Post poll found that a higher proportion of Washington-area residents — 28 percent — wanted the moniker changed.

An earlier Annenberg poll which showed the same result was attacked on the grounds that respondents classified themselves as “Native American.” Maybe they weren’t really, the race hustlers said.

(Interestingly, these are the same people who say that a man can be a woman if he just calls himself a woman. But apparently a white person can’t decide to be an Indian.)

But the current survey not only shows overwhelming majorities of Indians enrolled in a tribe are not offended, it shows 91 percent who live on or near tribal land say they are not offended.

This is just another case where the politically correct hustlers fail to represent the groups they claim to represent. Thus, women are as likely to oppose abortion as are men, feminists to the contrary. Blacks are likely to favor “quality of life” policing (which jumps on small offenses) and a clear majority of blacks believe the courts are “not harsh enough” on criminals.

Likwise, the black race hustlers go ballistic when people say “all lives matter” rather than “black lives matter.” But black people nationwide say they prefer “all lives matter.”

Honesty in any discussion of policy requires calling out the race (and gender) hustlers.

Anti-Social Media

Journal-Sentinel’s Preposterous “Bullying” Charge

From Rick Esenberg on Right Wisconsin:

A recent report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says the Faculty Hearing Report involving Marquette’s sanction of Professor John McAdams for speaking his mind “suggests” a pattern of “bullying” by Professor John McAdams. This is, in a word, preposterous. It is a claim that can be indulged only by those who mistake debate for assault and criticism for violence.

Indeed, it is not clear that any human being — someone speaking in the active rather than passive voice — is even making such an allegation. The FHC Report itself did not use the term and the newspaper hedges its bets by use of the term “suggests.”

Let’s begin by clearing some deadwood. The charges against John McAdams did not involve any incidents other than a blog post about an exchange between an undergraduate student and a Philosophy instructor. For that reason, other matters were not fully explored in the faculty committee hearing. Lawyers tend not to spend a great deal of time on matters that are not at issue. It’s a bit like herding cats.

Indeed, by focusing on these other incidents, the FHC demonstrated its bias in a particularly revealing way. No matter what lip service they may give to the value of gadflies, its members obviously don’t think much of Professor McAdams and his audacity in criticizing the university. McAdams has been a critic of the dominant views on campus and the dominant forces decided to strike back. The Abbate incident was taken as an opportunity to get rid of him.

In any event, these prior incidents involved investigating and writing about matters at Marquette. Criticism and publicity of public actions and matters of public and institutional interest are not “bullying.” If they were, then the Journal Sentinel’s Karen Herzog and Dan Bice and their newspaper colleagues would be the biggest bullies in town. But that would be an unfair way to characterize them. To say that McAdams was hired as a “professor” and not a “journalist” is a non sequitur. Professors have the right to engage in institutional criticism. It is a major component of academic freedom.

One could have just as easily written that prior incidents showed that McAdams was a critic of the university that now seeks to fire him. Indeed, McAdams’ writing on student activities is dwarfed by the number of times he has criticized very powerful figures at Marquette. Writing an article about the latter — and not the former — is to buy into the university’s misleading narrative.

As to the particular incidents of “bullying,” Professor McAdams wrote about the actions of the student newspaper in rejecting a pro-life advertisement. He attempted to contact a student who had listed herself as the campus contact for the production of the Vagina Monologues at the phone number that he had. He did nothing more than ask whether the play was going to be produced.

He wrote about the mistaken view by an unnamed student that citing facts that are inconsistent with one’s preexisting views on a subject - in this case the prevalence of sexual assault on campus - is not harassment. To be sure, in the midst of this debate with others (not the student herself), he referred to the unnamed student as “prissy.” If that is “bullying" we have truly become a nation of snowflakes. The University took no action in these situations because no action was warranted.

Vague references to “negative consequences” of McAdams blogging suggest something that is simply not there. The “negative consequences” here are no different than the “negative consequences” of an article that any of us might write. People will read it and form a judgment about the behavior reported upon. While Ms. Abbate received some abusive e-mails, Professor McAdams had nothing to do with them.

To say that our freedom of expression is limited by how the bottom feeders of life may react to them would mean that we have no freedom of expression at all. The FHC conceded that nothing like the e-mails sent to Ms. Abbate had, to John’s knowledge, happened before. And even if it had, the nasty and offensive reaction of third parties cannot silence the rest of us.

While Marquette repeatedly says that “more will come out” nothing ever does. The bottom line here is that John McAdams is being punished for writing an accurate blog post about a matter of great public and institutional interest.

That is atrocious.

Rick Esenberg is the head of our legal team, representing us against Marquette’s attempt to fire us.

Fossils

Marquette President Michael Lovell: Begging for Support from Faculty

Last Thursday evening, Marquette held the annual Pere Marquette Dinner for faculty. Of course, President Michael Lovell spoke and, somewhat surprisingly, addressed our case. A source who was at the dinner reported:

I went to the Pere Marquette dinner Thursday evening. It is a nice event to honor teaching at the university and I support the dinner . . . . Nevertheless, some people use the event for a soapbox. This year (as you may have heard already) Lovell used several minutes of his time in front of the audience to mention you and your situation. I thought it was inappropriate and a pathetic attempt to grovel for support from the faculty. He praised the Faculty Hearing Committee, mentioning them by name and inviting them to stand if they were in attendance. I think it is strange because the committee concluded (even though I’m sure several of them were against you) Marquette failed their own statutes in your situation. The ridiculous demand that you apologize for your behavior to avoid termination is, I believe all on Lovell and not the committee. I got the impression that Lovell expected some grand applause in support of his stand and statements. My sense was the applause was scattered and polite at best. One colleague sitting next to me had earlier expressed his displeasure with Lovell regarding your situation and some of his other initiatives. . . . I don’t believe the faculty are as enamored of Lovell as he seems to desperately hope they are.

The evening should end as a pleasant occasion for the faculty members who receive their teaching awards and those there to honor them. Instead, Lovell selfishly ended the evening by presenting his take on an unpleasant situation.

I think you have more support out there than may be apparent, although it is more or less quiet right now.

“Quiet” probably means intimidated, as was the case with the professor who wrote a critical essay about “Inclusivity and Tolerance” but would not reveal his or her name because . . . inclusion and tolerance aren’t accorded to politically incorrect views.

Another source reports that Lovell claimed to have gotten lots of e-mails supporting him. He apparently didn’t mention the large number opposing him. How do we know it’s a large number? Because a lot have been copied to us.

He also said he believes that our case will set a precedent that a large number of universities can follow. That is indeed a scary thought, since there are a fair number of conservative professors that a vocal section of faculty would like to get rid of, and a lot of spineless administrators who reflexively pander to the intolerant leftists.

Our source, however, suggests that it might set a precedent in a way Lovell does not want.

Fat Chance, Lady

Journal-Sentinel Hit Piece: Warrior Blogger Responds

Over the weekend, the Journal-Sentinel published an article accusing us of having a history of “bullying” people at Marquette. In fact, all the instances cited are examples of campus leftists trying to bully us.

Monday morning, we had an opportunity to respond on three Wisconsin talk radio shows. Here are the three interviews. There is some redundancy among the three, but between them we show how the Journal-Sentinel accepted at face value a shoddy report from the Faculty Hearing Committee, and then added a claim of “bullying” that the Faculty Hearing Committee never made.

First, Jay Weber:

Then, Jerry Bader (Green Bay):

Then, Charile Sykes:

Journal-Sentinel’s Bizarre “Bullying” Attack on Warrior Blogger

It was a screaming headline: “MU report suggests pattern of bullying by suspended McAdams.”

Written by education reporter Karen Herzog, it claims to be based on the Report of the Faculty Hearing Committee, which heard our case last September. Unfortunately, there are two massive problems with the story.

In the first place, Herzog has taken the claims of the Faculty Hearing Committee absolutely at face value, and never asked us or our lawyers for our side of the story.

In the second place, she mischaracterizes the Report. It nowhere in the 123 pages ever claims we were responsible for bullying anybody. So where did Herzog get that? Our guess is that it came either from leftist faculty at Marquette, or from Marquette administrators who have been flailing around in a sea of bad publicity, and are desperately trying to discredit us.

Let’s take the claims one at a time (with the Herzog claim in sans serif type):

Documents released by Marquette University in response to a lawsuit by tenured associate professor John McAdams suggest a pattern of bullying leading up to the targeting of a graduate student that resulted in his suspension.

Note the biased use of the word “targeted.” We reported on a graduate instructor, Cheryl Abbate, who told a student in an after-class confrontation that he could not express opposition to gay marriage, since such opposition would be “homophobic” and would “offend” any gay students in the class.

If this is “targeting,” then any negative reporting on anybody could be called “targeting.” Did the Journal-Sentinel “target” Scott Walker in the John Doe investigation? Their biased reporting was far closer to “targeting” than our accurate reporting on Abbate.

The report cites nine prior incidents of conflicts with administrators, other faculty members and students at the private Jesuit university since 1995.

Of course, if one reports misconduct in an institution, and especially if one is a whistle blower within the institution, there will be “conflicts.” Apparently, the assumption is that no faculty member should ever cause a “conflict” by criticizing anybody within the institution.

Notably, McAdams was never reprimanded or given a written warning. In addition, the report says, there are few indications in course evaluations that he attempted to intimidate students with opposing views in his classes.

These things are true, and the reason is that Marquette never had any basis to reprimand or warn us. Lots of people didn’t like our blog posts, but we violated no rules, and we were entirely within our rights, given Marquette’s guarantee of academic freedom.

The Faculty Hearing Committee explicitly said our teaching was quite satisfactory, and so was our scholarship. Marquette’s whole beef with us is our blog.

In March 2008, he posted a blog asking why the student newspaper had rejected an advertisement discouraging use of the “morning-after pill.” McAdams originally identified the student advertising director by name, but later deleted the name after discovering the student had played no role in rejecting the ad.

And what, supposedly, is wrong with this? Marquette seems to believe that we should not name people engaged in misconduct, even if they are functioning in an official capacity at Marquette, or are engaged in high-profile political activity.

The student in question was functioning as the Advertising Manager of the Tribune, and she did in fact reject the ad from Pro-Life Wisconsin. The Tribune ignored an e-mail of ours, and a voice mail of ours seeking more information before we posted the article. After the article was posted, a faculty advisor of the Tribune called us and told us that the Advertising Manager was in fact not responsible for the rejection of the ad. So we modified the article to reflect that.

In February 2011, he emailed a student listed on a Facebook page as the contact for a production of “The Vagina Monologues” at Marquette, then called her at her permanent residence, disturbing her parents. He wrote a blog post mentioning her by name, and continued to blog about her by name when she complained about his behavior. . . . The student filed a harassment complaint against McAdams and requested an “MU Stay Away Order” from the Marquette Public Safety Department.

The student (Anahi Sanchez) had listed herself as the Marquette “contact” for “The Vagina Monologues” on the national Vagina Monologues website (not Facebook). We had heard there would be a Marquette performance, and wanted to confirm that. We e-mailed her listed e-mail address, and got no response. We then called her listed phone number. She was not home, so we left a message asking her to call us.

She freaked, and went to the campus cops and Student Affairs to complain. The campus cops apparently blew it off (since we never got any Stay Away Order). We were contacted by university bureaucrats, including the Provost. We blogged about this, since at this point we were being harassed. And indeed, harassed by Sanchez and also by Provost Pauly.

prompting a reader to send a message to the student “to simply demonstrate that actions have consequences.”

And you can read the message (by James Diamond) here, and it’s perfectly civil.

The provost responded by asking McAdams to meet with him, the acting dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and the chair of the political science department for a conversation about the blurring of McAdams’ roles and his possible misuse of the student information system.

Of course, we were being bullied here. In what kind of bizarre world do campus bureaucrats try to intimidate a faculty blogger, and then accuse him of being the bully?

In November 2011, he blogged about a complaint that a student filed alleging that McAdams, in casting doubt on commonly cited rape statistics, had made comments belittling rape victims. McAdams referred in his blog to the complainant as a “prissy little feminist.”

What happened is this: in our American politics class, we discussed media bias, and the bogus statistics often bandied around. We explicitly mentioned the claim that 25% or 20% of college women are victims of date rape as such statistics.

A female student in the class took offense, and filed a sexual harassment complaint against us.

That’s right. A student claimed to have been sexually harassed simply because a professor said something she didn’t like hearing.

The Committee apparently thinks our calling the student (whose name we did not know) a “prissy little feminist” was terrible.  But what would be the correct term for some student who claims to have been harassed when she merely hears something she disagrees with? Would “snowflake” have been better? Unfortunately, that was not in common use when the incident happened.

We did not belittle rape victims. However, in the minds of feminists, any dissent from the orthodoxy of a rape epidemic apparently translates into “belittling rape victims.” But in reality, feminist researchers who classify women as “rape victims” when the women themselves insist that what happened was not rape are doing the belittling.

In September 2014, he was called to a meeting with his college dean over a confrontation with a student group called “Students for Justice in Palestine.” McAdams warned the dean to be careful what he put in the letter that would follow because “you don’t want to be in my blog.” McAdams later admitted that his statement was intended to affect the dean’s actions during their meeting.

Translation: we made it clear to the Dean that any reprimand or any punishment for our blogging would be immediately reported on our blog. And this is somehow bullying? Do we have the power to bully the Dean? Apparently, we had an obligation to submit to being censured or reprimanded. Or else, we should have said nothing, and then blindsided Dean Holz by denouncing him on our blog.

The president of Students for Justice in Palestine had complained that he felt “intimidated” when we tried to interview him about “Israeli Apartheid Week” which that organization was sponsoring. He secretly recorded the conversation, and the recording shows us merely politely asking him for information.

(One piece of hypocrisy here: the Faculty Hearing Committee objected to our use of a recording of the student confrontation with Cheryl Abbate, but Marquette had no problem with the student recording the exchange with us.)

Snowflakes

Are we noticing a pattern here? Social Justice Warriors, if ever challenged or merely asked for information, run and start whining about how they have been bullied or harassed or intimidated. They specialize in playing the victim, even as they are victimizing others.

The Abbate Affair

Herzog then recounts the details of the student’s confrontation with Abbate, and adds:

McAdams targeted the graduate student instructor by name in a November 2014 post that prompted dozens of harassing emails to Abbate. She ultimately transferred to another university to finish her doctoral work, because she said she feared for her safety and was unable to focus on preparing her dissertation topic defense at Marquette, according to the documents released this week. Transferring required her to repeat three semesters of coursework.

Abbate was “ABD.” That is, she had finished all her coursework, and lacked only her dissertation. One can write a dissertation anywhere. She could have flown off to India, finished it, and e-mailed it back. She might have had to fly back to defend it, but in this era of Skype, even that would be unlikely.

So why would she transfer to another Ph.D program? Simple. She transferred from a Marquette program that barely ranks in the top 100 nationally, to one at Colorado that ranks in the top 40.

McAdams has repeatedly argued he was obliged to identify Abbate on his blog “because the norms of journalism require such identification," the faculty hearing committee report said.

“This would be a far stronger argument if Dr. Adams were employed by Marquette as a journalist," the report says. “But he is not; Dr. McAdams is a professor, and therefore his first loyalty must be to the obligations of the academic profession.”

This is beyond bizarre. Apparently, telling the truth, or at least telling the truth about one’s own institution, is not one of the “obligations of the academic profession.” Apparently, the most important obligation, for the Faculty Hearing Committee, is to not make trouble for anybody, or at least not for the forces of political correctness at Marquette.

Ironically, many of the same faculty who want us fired signed a statement condemning Marquette for its failure to hire aggressively outspoken lesbian dean candidate Jodi O’Brien.

The report argues that McAdams could have avoided naming Abbate or linking to her contact information

We did not link to her contact information. We linked to a post on her blog about how “All Men Contribute to the Prevalence of Rape.” It may well be that Abbate’s contact information was on that blog. The point of the link was to show the anti-male sexism of Abbate.

could have confirmed what Abbate’s views were on the conflict

We in fact e-mailed her on Sunday morning to ask her perception of what happened. By the time we went live with the post Sunday evening, she had contacted Nancy Snow and James South, who advised her not to respond to our query. Since we had a recording of the confrontation, there was no doubt as to what she had said to the student.

and could have helped the student — his academic advisee — internally pursue his complaint against Abbate instead of publicly shaming her and exposing her to harassment.

The student had lodged his complain, and was greeted with hostility.

Bureaucrats in any organization would prefer to keep misconduct quiet, handled internally, with people outside the organization none the wiser. That’s the way the Catholic Church dealt with the priestly sex abuse scandal.

But letting the bureaucrats keep the abuse quiet removes the incentive to fix systemic problems. And if the institution is claiming to be one thing (a Catholic university) while actually being something else, to conceal systemic abuses is to be a party to fraud.

Journalists function by exposing wrongdoing, not by covering it up.

A Pretext

This recital of grievances various people at Marquette have against this blogger make clear one thing the University will not admit: the Abbate affair is simply a pretext to get rid of a professor who has created trouble for administrators and politically correct faculty and activists.

Conclusion

Thus, the Faculty Hearing Committee produced a shoddy document, and Herzog merely accepted it as face value, and even added a spin (“bullying”) that the Report did not contain.

But in fact, the incidents the Faculty Hearing Committee recounted are a story of years of bullying and harassment — the bullying and harassment of this blogger, by people who piously pretend to be victimized.

And the biggest example of bullying is Marquette’s attempt to fire us.

Campus Political Correctness: How Bad Can it Get?

From Front Page Magazine:

Scripps: The Most Racist College in America

Students urged to feel good about hating white people.

White people are worthy of hatred and no one should feel bad for hating them, incoming freshmen are told at the all-female, ultra-politically correct Scripps College in southern California, making it probably the worst and most racist undergraduate school in the United States.

“Anger is a legitimate response to oppression, as is sadness, fear, frustration, exhaustion, and a general distaste or hatred of white people,” write the student authors of the Unofficial Scripps College Survival Guide. The 217-page exercise in PC brainwashing is supposed to help new students adjust to Scripps College.

Scripps is one member of Claremont Colleges, a consortium of five undergraduate schools (known as the 5Cs) and two graduate schools located in Claremont, which is between Los Angeles and San Bernardino. The other four undergraduate member colleges are Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, and Pitzer. All five undergraduate colleges are afflicted by a group called The 5C Students of Color Alliance which wants racially segregated “safe spaces” off-limits to white students created.

Anti-white racism, anti-male sexism, and a catalog of ugly leftist, un-American ideas are all on display in the Scripps so-called survival guide. Rest assured that if the targets were anyone other than Caucasians and men, investigators from the Justice Department would be swarming Scripps College as you read this column.

And don’t let the weaselly word unofficial in the handbook’s title fool you. The campus administration unashamedly supports and promotes this radical vade mecum that is packed with politically correct drivel intended to poison the minds of impressionable youth and turn them against the American experiment. The college’s website contains an article describing the handbook in glowing terms. Officials appear to have chosen the descriptor unofficial only because they think it sounds cool.

The guidebook defines “White Privilege” as “the set of unearned benefits white people gain as a result of systematic racism and discrimination” that “benefits even those white people who are disadvantaged by other forms of institutionalized oppression like ableism, classism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.”

The writers add that “asking people of color to educate us about racism,” “asking people of color to absolve us of our guilt,” and “identifying the ways that we are engaging in the perpetuation of white supremacy” are all things that “we need to stop doing right now.”

In a “Dear white students” section, they explain that “[r]everse racism cannot exist because white people maintain power over people of color” and “because there are no institutions that were founded with the intention of discriminating against white people on the basis of their skin [color].”

A section focused on how to be a good “Trans Ally” urges new arrivals to ask for each of their peers’ gender pronouns to avoid unwittingly imposing the traditional male-female dichotomy on them. “Enacting a life of accountability and ownership over your own domination and privileges is the only way you can exhibit allyship,” the book states.

The guidebook also advocates the policing of language. It warns students to be careful about what they say in class and calls “capitalism and consumerism” concepts that “can lead to [the] dangerous promotion of certain ideals and widespread circulation of stigmatizing information.” The book scolds “those who oppose trigger warnings,” labeling such people as uncaring and “potentially sexist, ableist, homophobic, racist, classist, etc.”

And further:

Earlier this year the crazed leftists of the 5Cs drove the editor-in-chief of the conservative-leaning Claremont Independent out of his campus job as a writing coach. Steven Glick quit his job at Pomona College’s Writing Center, saying the constant harassment its progressive staff inflicted on him pushed him over the edge.

Glick wrote a column posted on the newspaper’s website that was titled, “I resign: The Writing Center’s mission is to teach writing, not ideology[.]” He explained that one of the center’s professors complained he wasn’t doing enough to make students feel welcome.

“To rectify that, she canceled my appointments that night and asked me to read three packets about identity politics instead,” Glick wrote. “One of the readings states that teaching English to non-native English speakers is an attack on free speech. Another criticizes ‘the hegemonic feminist theory produced by academic women, most of whom were white.’ The third, titled ‘Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy,’ states that capitalism is racist.”

“I read all three packets, as I had been told to do. I did not agree with the opinions presented in any of them, nor did I see any connection between these readings and my work at the Writing Center,” Glick added.

Glick was then asked “what role identity politics should play in the Writing Center’s mission.” He said his answer was to provide “students with a community of experienced readers and writers, offering free, one-on-one consultations at any stage of the writing process—from generating a thesis and structuring an argument to fine-tuning a draft.”

Apparently that was the wrong answer because the next day Glick was placed on probation at the center. He quit even though he said he loved the job.

The newspaper, incidentally, has been attacked as “insensitive,” “racist, sexist, classist,” and for allegedly making some students “emotionally ill.”

After a photo of Glick and two of his editorial colleagues was posted online wearing promotional tank tops that read “Claremont Independent: Always Right,” one critic snarled, “Literally everything about it is a joke and honestly I wish I could shut them down but they would be so quick to spit their ‘constitutional rights,’ rights that only work for some.” Glick said a strange woman who saw the photo came up to him uninvited during dinner and ranted for 15 minutes about how the photo supposedly promoted racism, sexism, and other isms. “When she left, she said I was a bigot,” he added.

By all means, read the entire thing, if you can stomach it.

Most institutions aren’t this bad, but this kind of raw naked bigotry is found widely throughout academia, including at Marquette. Women’s colleges, of course, are among the worst, since they tend to attract virulently anti-male feminists.  There is, in fact, very little here that cannot be found at Marquette, although it does not so completely dominate the culture at Marquette.

Really Very Much Alike

Apologize for Hiroshima?

It would certainly be in character for Barack Obama, who takes a pretty negative view of America’s role in the world (at least, of most of the things we did before he became president).

But interestingly enough, the Japanese (or at least their government) isn’t keen on the idea, as explained in an article in the Los Angeles Times.

In the first place, the current government is relatively hawkish, and doesn’t welcome the knee-jerk pacifism that bringing up the issue will tend to generate. Then there is this:

“Why doesn’t the Japanese government want Mr. Obama to apologize? Because it tears the scab off a much bigger wound that Japan wants healed,” says Grant Newsham, a senior research fellow with Japan Forum for Strategic Studies and former U.S. diplomat with over 20 years’ experience in Japan.

“If Obama apologizes at Hiroshima, it draws attention to Japanese behavior elsewhere in Asia during the ’30s and ’40s. It might even be demanded that the Japanese government and emperor go to Singapore and apologize for slaughtering 25,000 Chinese there in 1942. Or to Australia to apologize for how they treated their POWs. Or to the Philippines (to apologize) for a few hundred thousand murders by the Imperial Japanese Army as well.”

Apologizing for dropping the atomic bomb is a bit like apologizing for slavery: it’s a form of moral self-pleasuring. It doesn’t make anything any better, and all the people responsible are long since dead.

But it’s worse than that. Dropping the bomb was a horrible way to end a horrible war, but it was less horrible than the alternatives. The ruling Japanese military was willing to fight to the death, and not just to their own death. They were willing to fight to the death of literally millions of Japanese soldiers and civilians.

Marquette Attempt to Fire Warrior Blogger: More From the Wall Street Journal

From the Wall Street Journal:

May 5, 2016 7:21 p.m. ET

We told you recently about Marquette University professor John McAdams, who writes an independent blog called the Marquette Warrior. In 2014 a Marquette student told Mr. McAdams about an exchange in which his philosophy instructor, a graduate student named Cheryl Abbate, told him that his views about gay marriage were homophobic and not open for discussion in her classroom.

Mr. McAdams blogged about the exchange and Ms. Abbate got nasty letters, a result that prompted the school to suspend Mr. McAdams, bar him from setting foot on campus and threaten him with termination unless he admitted by April 14 that his actions were “reckless.” In a letter to Marquette President Michael Lovell, Mr. McAdams declined to do so. (http://www.will-law.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2016-04-04-Signed-Letter-to-Lovell.pdf)

The University did not rescind its position and Mr. McAdams Monday filed suit in Milwaukee County Circuit Court on grounds that the school has abrogated academic freedoms it guarantees. As a private university, Marquette is not subject to the First Amendment, but the school guarantees academic freedom by contract.

According to the school’s faculty statutes, “dismissal shall not be used to restrain faculty members in their exercise of academic freedom or other rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution.” The school says it is acting because Mr. McAdams should have known that his blog would generate criticism of Ms. Abbate, but by that standard freedom of speech is limited by what we can predict others in the online free-for-all will say about what we write.

Universities are meant to be bastions of vigorous debate. When a tenured professor can lose his job because of what strangers on the Internet said, what speech is safe?

Endangered Species

GLENN MCCOY © Belleville News-Democrat. Dist. By UNIVERSAL UCLICK. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Intolerant “Inclusion” at Marquette

From Marquette Wire, an anonymous faculty member writes about how “inclusion” has become a slogan for intolerance on campus. One key paragraph:

Welcome to the world of the politically correct. When calls for inclusivity and diversity demand a form of submission, silence and/or repression, we have done a disservice to our community. In the real world people disagree, sometimes on important matters, sometimes on very personal matters with very civil implications, e.g. gay marriage and gender issues. Suggesting that repression of discussion of such matters will advance any real diversity and true toleration is both misguided and offensive. It does not teach our students how to navigate such difficulties in life and society, but only how to compartmentalize them. It does not teach them how to think, or to debate and disagree constructively, but only to accept what they are told – indoctrination rather than education. We are losing our ability as a society to engage in real conversation and to live with and manage conflict. And Marquette University is encouraging rather than remedying that development.

And then summarizing:

The inclusivity agenda does not encourage diversity. It is rather an imposed uniformity that chooses which views to silence and which views to embrace. It is also at fundamental odds with the notion of the liberal arts university, and special interests have driven their agenda so far in this regard that some now even argue to change the first amendment. I urge administration and our community as a whole to reconsider our understanding of terms like inclusivity and diversity, and take more caution in how they hope to encourage them. Let us recall what toleration truly means.

Why is this published anonymously?

I am not some kind of rabble-rouser; I generally steer clear of debates such as these. Yet these developments disturb me greatly, as they do many others on campus. But to question this agenda openly is literally to risk one’s career (hence the anonymity of this letter).

That’s right. This professor fears his or her career will be jeopardized. Are we talking tenure, promotion, emeritus status, salary, grants, teaching load? Probably any and all of the above, depending on this person’s situation.

This came to our attention just a few minutes after answering another e-mail from a faculty member, who explained why he or she was fearful about speaking out on our behalf concerning Marquette’s attempt to fire us.

And in fact, in Marquette’s Climate Survey, where respondents were protected by anonymity, “many” and “numerous” people (using the terms in the published report on the survey) objected to leftist intolerance on campus, and particularly our treatment by the University.

In contrast, faculty who want us fired have been quite willing to speak out publicly.

In short, the climate on campus is one of politically correct bullying. In this context, faculty who have spoken out on our behalf (Tom Jeffers and Dan Maguire), and students like Caroline Comstock and Kevin Selwa (who have done likewise), are to be commended.  As is the student group Turning Point USA.

These folks have been quite brave. But you should not have to be brave on a university campus to speak out. But at Marquette, the politically correct bullies dominate the discourse.

And who are the biggest bullies? The Marquette Administration.

That’s a Strategy

Marquette Touts Shoddy Faculty Committee Report: Our Lawyers Respond

Marquette has now released the Report of the Faculty Hearing Committee that reviewed our case. Interestingly, they did it without our permission, in spite of insisting for months that they could not do it without our permission.

Indeed, just last week, they asked the University Academic Senate for permission to release it, provided we agreed. The proposition they put to that group was:

• A motion to amend the confidentiality provisions governing Faculty Hearing Committee reports to allow their release (with appropriate redactions) upon request of the subject faculty member; or upon the request of the Faculty Hearing Committee (by majority vote) or university administration, with the consent of the subject faculty member

We, following the advice of our lawyer, have not released it. But now Marquette has released it unilaterally.

Why? Apparently, they have been feeling the heat of the bad publicity their actions have created, and they think it helps their case against us. But in fact, if anybody actually takes the time to read it, it becomes obvious how bogus that “case” becomes. Our legal team has issued the following press release outlining some of the problems.

Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty Responds to Marquette’s Release of Faculty Report re: Professor McAdams

The Faculty Hearing Committee was biased from beginning; does not exonerate university, Lovell mishandling of issue

May 4, 2016 – Milwaukee, WI – Monday, in response to the lawsuit filed by suspended Marquette University professor John McAdams, Marquette University released the written report of its Faculty Hearing Committee. The FHC is supposed to be the guardian of a tenured faculty member’s procedural and substantive rights against the power of the University Administration. But as shown in the attachment, the FHC failed in its mission.

On behalf of Professor McAdams, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty has objected from the beginning to the way in which Marquette has handled the entire matter. Those concerns were compounded by the composition and conduct of the FHC.

Marquette’s self-serving and selective references to the FHC report ignore the fact that the Committee did not exonerate the Administration. To the contrary, it found that Marquette’s summary suspension and banishment of Professor McAdams violated its own rules of conduct. And in many other respects the report is fatally flawed.

• The FHC refused to follow requirements placed in the faculty statutes to ensure that tenured professors receive a fair hearing.
• It permitted a clearly biased member to remain on the committee, did nothing to ameliorate the effects of a summary suspension it acknowledged was entirely improper, and refused to compel the administration to turn over evidence in its possession to assist Professor McAdams in preparing for its hearing.
• Furthermore, it gutted Marquette’s contractual promise of academic freedom and free speech by making up rules after the fact to justify punishing Professor McAdams.
• Finally, it lost sight of the fact that Dr. McAdams was standing up for a student who was being mistreated by a Marquette Instructor. Professor McAdams maintains that the academic freedom allegedly guaranteed by Marquette allowed him to write about any and all topics of public interest, in particular the mistreatment of an undergraduate student by his Instructor and the subsequent failure of the Administration even to consider his complaint.

A comprehensive response to the Faculty Hearing Committee and process can be found here.

So why would a faculty committee fail to uphold our academic freedom?

We have suggested two complementary theories: ideological bias and toadyism. One of the committee members, Dr. Lynn Turner, was allowed to remain on the committee in spite of having, along with other leftist faculty, signed a statement attacking us. And it attacked us not merely for the blog post about Abbate, but several other blog posts that have criticized leftist intolerance on campus. This, of course, is evidence that the Abbate affair was merely a pretext to get rid of a professor who has caused trouble by outing intolerant political correctness on campus.

The other element is probably toadyism. It’s a nice romantic notion that faculty will stand up for academic freedom, even the freedom of professors with whose ideas they disagree.  But in fact, the temptation to cozy up to an administration that controls budgets and can hand out all kinds of perks to favored faculty is huge.

That said, the Report may be a clumsy compromise between committee members who wanted us fired (which is what the University was demanding) and members who were willing to stand up for academic freedom. Given pressures for unanimity, both groups may have had to compromise on a one to two semester unpaid suspension.

The Report makes clear, however, that Lovell was being flatly dishonest in implying that his demand for an abject apology followed the committee’s recommendation. There is nothing whatsoever about any apology in the Report.

Warrior Blogger on Vicki McKenna / May 2, 2016

Here we are on the Vicki McKenna show on May 2, shortly after announcing that we are filing a lawsuit against Marquette, demanding reinstatement and monetary damages for their attempt to fire us.

You Are Not Alone

Donald Trump: Crazy Conspiracy Theorist

If you are even slightly inclined to take this notion seriously, you should read this, and also read this.

Conspiracy theorist Jefferson Morley (one of the few conspiracy theorists with a modicum of mainstream credibility) notes:

In the still photo reproduced by the Enquirer the man alleged to be Cruz appears to be handing out pamphlets with Oswald. In the film version, however, he seems to have taken a pamphlet and talks to other passersby, and then vanishes, never to appear again. The man took a pamphlet. There is no visual evidence that he “worked with” Oswald.

One might try to excuse Trump on the grounds that other important political figures have believed in JFK conspiracy theories. Secretary of State John Kerry is one example.

We think all the JFK conspiracy theories are unsupported by evidence, and most are provably bogus. But having doubts about Oswald as the lone gunman is not a bizarre belief, especially for somebody who has been paying only casual attention to the issue.

But Trump has embraced a very marginal theory for which few if any seasoned buffs (including those who believe in a conspiracy) see any evidence. And he has done so on the basis of a report in the National Enquirer.

If he is so incapable of distinguishing reliable and unreliable evidence on this trivial issue, how much confidence can we have in his judgment on vital matters of national security?

Press Conference: Warrior Blogger Will Sue Marquette

Letter to Lovell: Gay Marriage Can Be Discussed

President Michael R. Lovell
Office of the President
Marquette University
1250 W. Wisconsin Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53233

Dear President Lovell:

I have read with dismay the controversy at Marquette University over the question of whether a student can raise objections or even discuss the question of same-sex marriage at your university. The claim of the teaching assistant, Ms. Abbate, is that some gay student may be upset if the issue is discussed. Her position was challenged by Prof. McAdams and he is the one who got suspended. Sir, you have suspended the wrong person. This is especially ironic since the Catholic Church has been and is vocally opposed to same-sex marriage.

The reasoning here is faulty: Are you allowed to object to abortion at Marquette, knowing that a feminist might be unhappy? The typical tactic of the left—the left that has captured the humanities at most American universities—is not to debate issues, but to intimidate and silence those whose views do not align with theirs. It is not a question of arguing against those with a different position, it is a matter of silencing them.

I will quote your mission statement because it is so relevant here:

As a Catholic university, we are committed to the unfettered pursuit of truth under the mutually illuminating powers of human intelligence and Christian faith. Our Catholic identity is expressed in our choices of curricula, our sponsorship of programs and activities devoted to the cultivation of our religious character, our ecumenical outlook, and our support of Catholic beliefs and values. Precisely because Catholicism at its best seeks to be inclusive, we are open to all who share our mission and seek the truth about God and the world, and we are firmly committed to academic freedom as the necessary precondition for that search. We welcome and benefit enormously from the diversity of seekers within our ranks, even as we freely choose and celebrate our own Catholic identity.

I am a graduate of [redacted] and have been teaching at a large state university for the past 48 years. I teach an Introduction to Moral Philosophy course each semester. We discuss these four topics: Abortion, Euthanasia, Death Penalty, and Sex and Marriage. We read philosophers and analyze Supreme Court decisions on each of these topics. With respect to same-sex marriage, we read Goodridge v Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the first state supreme court decision overturning the Massachusetts prohibition of same-sex marriage, both the majority opinion and the dissenting opinion of Justice Martha Sosman who gives vigorous objection to the majority opinion and defends marriage as between a man and a woman. We also read Bowers v Hardwick in which the U. S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the Georgia statutes criminalizing homosexual sodomy. Then, we read a later case, Lawrence v Texas in which Justice Blackmun’s dissent in Bowers became the majority opinion in Lawrence. This case overturned Texas’ statute banning homosexual sodomy.

I put in this detail because I have never had a gay or lesbian student, or any other student, object to the open and spirited debate over abortion, marriage, sex, or social arrangements. In other words, abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, and sex and marriage can and should be discussed in a university ethics class. Most ethics textbooks have chapters on these topics.

Going to a university, especially a Catholic university, should never mean that you will not hear things you do not agree with or things which may challenge your views or things that may even hurt your feelings. Do you admit Protestant students? How do they feel when Catholic doctrine is taught? A university is supposed to be a marketplace of ideas, where we challenge each other to give reasons and use persuasion, all done in a civil manner. Someone in your administration or even you yourself should instruct Ms. Abbate the meaning of free speech, academic freedom, and the purpose of a university. Better yet, have her read your University Mission Statement. Do not give in to the totalitarianism of controlling speech under the guise that someone may have his or her feelings hurt or that any speech that does not accord with the catechism of the politically correct is “hate speech.” It is hard for me to believe that I can teach things and allow arguments in a state university that are forbidden in a Catholic university, especially when the forbidden discussions are in accord with Catholic doctrine.

Best wishes,

[Name Withheld]

[The writer notes that he does “not want to be dragged personally into the New Spanish Inquisition.”]

In fact, it is perfectly plausible that a large state university might be more open to a discussion of diverse ideas about sexuality than the nominally Catholic Marquette, just as places like the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Texas A & M have more vital Catholic ministries than does Marquette.

There is a particular type of parochialism that afflicts the secularized “Catholic” institutions, but it it not Catholic parochialism. It’s the parochialism that believes it has right to enforce an orthodoxy by authoritarian top-down means. But it’s not a Catholic orthodoxy being enforced, but rather secular political correctness.

Shark Infested Waters

GLENN MCCOY © Belleville News-Democrat. Dist. By UNIVERSAL UCLICK. Reprinted
with permission. All rights reserved.