Blow Up the Process

Marquette Faculty Senate Mulling Ways to Silence Warrior Blogger

An e-mail from the Marquette Provost about a meeting of the Academic Senate sounds bland enough.

But it’s necessary to know some context to know what’s going on.

When Marquette lost its legal case against us, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed our contractual right to blog about things at Marquette (including misconduct at Marquette), the university released a truculent statement affirming it was right to try to fire us.

Marquette’s statement included several of the lies they have been telling all along.

The professor used his personal blog to mock a student teacher, intentionally exposing her name and contact information to a hostile audience that sent her vile and threatening messages. Fearing for her safety, the former student teacher left the university, a significant setback to her academic career and personal well-being.

Our post on the conduct of graduate instructor Cheryl Abbate was not mocking at all, but rather described how she told an undergraduate that he was not allowed to express opposition to gay marriage in her class since it would “come across as homophobic” and might “offend” any gay students in class.

We did not “expose her contact information.” We linked to her public blog. Had somebody dug around the blog, they could have eventually found her e-mail address, although it was not on the page we linked to. But it would have been much easier to just Google her name.

Abbate received vile messages, certainly, but no threatening ones, as she admitted on her blog.

The difference is not trivial. Real threats are a matter for law enforcement.

Finally, Marquette lied about the reason Abbate left the university.

In reality, she had wanted to leave Marquette for Colorado (a much better Ph.D. program) the year before, but there was no room for her. The brouhaha over our blog post caused Colorado to reach out and offer her admission.

Marquette’s Threat

Doubling down on its position, Marquette promised:

Marquette will work with its faculty to re-examine its policies, with the goal of providing every assurance possible that this never happens again.

What policies could that be? The Faculty Handbook, which is incorporated into every contract Marquette faculty have. The language in that handbook is what led the Wisconsin Supreme Court to find that Marquette had breached our contract when it tried to fire us.

And what “faculty” would Marquette “work with” to change the rules and silence (or at least impede) our blogging? The Faculty Senate.

So these entries in the schedule of the meeting look particularly significant:

XI. Workgroups – Dr. Michelle Mynlieff (4:35 to 4:57)

• Consider what to include in “professional conduct/cyberbullying” policy.
• Balance of academic freedom and professional behavior

XII. Call for volunteers for ad hoc committees (4:57 to 5:00)

• Professional behavior/cyberbullying policy committee
• Review of Grievance procedure

Apparently, Marquette wants to call it “cyberbullying” if we report misconduct on the part of anybody at Marquette.

And also claim that faculty have rules for “professional behavior” that preclude criticizing people at the university.

How Do We Know?

How do we know that this is aimed at us? Because in oral exchanges within the Academic Senate the “McAdams issue” has been mentioned in connection with potential amendments to the Faculty Handbook.

We will see how this unfolds, but unfortunately, academic freedom is in poor hands when it is in the hands of the faculty.

In the first place, the ideological biases of the faculty mean that conservative ideas and people will get little protection. College faculty are the sort who label speech they don’t like “racist” or “sexist” or “homophobic” or “hate speech” or “harassing” or “offensive.”

In the second place, groups like the Academic Senate tend to contain a self-selected bunch of faculty, many of which want to remain in the good graces of the administration.

So we will see what we shall see.

Serena Williams - Playing the Gender Card When You Can’t Win A Tennis Match

Paradox of Patriarchy: The More Female Equality, the More Different Men and Women Are

From The Times (London):

We all know what is meant to happen when the genders become more equal. As women smash glass ceilings and open up education, other differences should disappear too.

Without the psychological shackles of being the second sex, women are free to think and behave as they want; to become physicists or CEOs, unfettered by outdated stereotypes.

Yet, to the confusion of psychologists, we are seeing the reverse. The more gender equality in a country, the greater the difference in the way men and women think. It could be called the patriarchy paradox.

Two psychology studies support this counter-intuitive idea, but no one can properly explain it.

In a survey of about 130,000 people from 22 countries, scientists from the University of Gothenburg found that countries with more women in the workforce, parliament and education were also those in which psychological traits among men and women diverged more widely.

Note that “women in parliament” may be a poor indicator, since it often is the result of affirmative action or even explicit quotas. Education is much better, and “women in the workforce” probably is too, although in a lot of poor countries women are in the workforce because the family is dirt poor and they have to take a sweatshop job to survive.

In China, which still scores low on gender parity, the personality overlap between men and women was found to be about 84 per cent. In the Netherlands, which is among the most gender equal societies, it was 61 per cent.

Erik Mac Giolla, the study’s lead researcher, said that, if anything, the results found a bigger difference than in previous work. Personality is typically measured using the “big five” traits of openness, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. Women typically score higher on all of them, but there is always overlap.

“It seems that as gender equality increases, as countries become more progressive, men and women gravitate towards traditional gender norms,” Dr Mac Giolla said. “Why is this happening? I really don’t know.”

In a separate study, published online in Plos One, of countries ranked as less gender-equal by the World Economic Forum, women were more likely to choose traditionally male courses such as the sciences.

Steve Stewart-Williams, from the University of Nottingham, said that there was too much evidence of this effect to consider it a fluke. “It’s not just personality. The same counter-intuitive pattern has been found in choice of academic speciality, choice of occupation, crying frequency, depression, happiness and interest in casual sex.

“It’s definitely a challenge to one prominent stream of feminist theory, according to which almost all the differences between the sexes come from cultural training and social roles.”

Dr Stewart-Williams, author of The Ape That Understood the Universe, said an explanation could be that those living in wealthier and more genderequal societies have greater freedom to pursue their own interests and behave more individually, so magnifying natural differences.

Whatever the reason for the findings, he argued that they mean we should stop thinking of sex differences in society as being automatically a product of oppression. “These differences may be indicators of the opposite: a relatively free and fair society,” he said.

“Treating men and women the same makes them different, and treating them differently makes then the same. I don’t think anyone predicted that. It’s bizarre.”

No, it’s not.

It’s only bizarre to believe that men and women are identical in their innate psychological traits. That’s a rigid dogma for feminists, but utterly foreign to cognitive psychology, and indeed foreign to pretty much all of humanity through all of history.

Are They Young Earth Creationists?

Leftists sneer at conservative Christians for not believing in evolution, but can’t get their head around the notion that the evolutionary process would exploit sexual dimorphism to improve the evolutionary fitness of the species. And not merely in obvious ways like men having a greater muscle mass (the better to hunt game and fight off attackers).

There is every reason to believe that evolution would result in women being psychologically different from men — on average. For example, the lower conscientiousness and neuroticism in men may increase the evolutionary fitness of a particular tribe or clan because men have to hunt game and fight off enemies. Being neurotic and fastidious is counter-productive in those activities.

But when women are conscientiousness about sanitation in the camp or village, and a bit neurotic about possibly tainted food or dangers children face, the survival prospects of the group increase.

While contradicting feminist dogma, these findings show that equality of opportunity for women is a good thing. That is, if feminists (and the elites who pander to them) will let women be what they want to be. Which for many women — but not all — will be different from what men want to be.

Tantrum

Father Wild Asks Name Be Removed from Residence Hall

A letter to the entire university from President Michael Lovell:

Dear Marquette community:

I wanted to share the letter below from Father Robert Wild, Marquette’s 22nd president and chancellor, requesting his name be removed from our newest residence hall, as well as my response.

Father Wild has requested that his name be removed because he regrets not using his authority to do more to protect victims and prevent future clergy abuse. We know that when we stand behind Marquette’s mission and Guiding Values, we have a framework to help us during difficult times.

May God help our Catholic community, both here at Marquette and throughout the world, come closer together to support victims of abuse and further the healing process.

Sincerely,
Dr. Michael R. Lovell
President
Marquette University

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Letter from Father Wild to President Lovell and Board of Trustees
Dear Mike and members of the Marquette Board of Trustees:

As a Jesuit, Catholic priest, I am filled with sorrow and abhorrence at any incident of abuse committed by a religious leader. While those feelings cannot atone for what people endured who have been sexually abused, I still want to express my regret for their suffering and for the terrible wrongs done by their abusers.

As Provincial Superior of the Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) from 1985 to 1991, I was invested with authority over all Jesuits belonging to that particular three-state region. During my six years in office, accusations of sexual abuse of minors were lodged against three of our members. Looking back, I would have handled certain aspects of those cases rather differently than I did then. The restrictive measures I thought quite sufficient to restrain the behavior of one of those priests, for example, proved in practice to be insufficient to do so. I very much regret that and apologize especially to those victimized for my mistakes in that regard.

In a recent letter to the whole Church, Pope Francis describes the sexual abuse of minors and other vulnerable people as something demonic and cites in that connection Matthew 17:21, where Jesus explains to his disciples, “This class of demons can only be expelled by prayer and fasting.” After much thought and prayer, and careful consideration, I have decided that one aspect of the “fasting” I should undertake is to formally request that Marquette University remove my name from our new residence hall complex. Therefore, after careful discussion of the matter with Marquette University’s leadership, I formally request that the University remove my name from the building that was recently named for me.

Sincerely,
Robert A. Wild, S.J.

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Statement from Marquette University President Michael R. Lovell
Marquette University’s Board of Trustees received today a thoughtful letter from Rev. Robert A. Wild, S.J., stating his request to have his name taken off of our new residence hall. I respect Father Wild’s decision as laid out in his letter, and the Board unanimously agreed to honor his request. We are in agreement with Father Wild that this is the right decision for both Marquette and survivors of clergy abuse. The residence hall, which includes Ray and Kay Eckstein Tower and Wells St. Hall, will be known as The Commons. We have tremendous respect for Father Wild and are grateful for his leadership as Marquette’s president from 1996 to 2011 and again from 2013 to 2014. Anyone who knows Father Wild understands that he values the Gospel message of love and forgiveness and we move forward together as a Marquette community in that spirit. We offer our prayers for continued strength and healing for all survivors of clergy abuse.

We have blogged about Wild and the sex abuse scandal, breaking the story locally, and providing follow up coverage.

Evaluating Wild

We were never a big fan of Wild, viewing him as easily manipulated. He was easily persuaded by the (dishonest) claim of the Gay/Straight Alliance of Marquette that they would do nothing to contradict Catholic sexual teaching. They have done little else.

He was easily persuaded by Wisconsin Indian chiefs to reject the nickname “Warriors” as offensive.

He was easily manipulated by a cabal at Marquette to hire a lesbian Arts & Sciences Dean (Jodi O’brien), then when local Catholics and the Archbishop got wind of it and objected, he withdrew the offer. Then when politically correct leftists on campus raised a ruckus, he started pandering to them, inviting a lesbian consultant to campus to give advice as to how to do that, and established the ill-fated Gender and Sexuality Resource Center.

Wild was, to be blunt, easily manipulated.

But on the other hand . . .

. . . Wild’s failure as Provincial Superior of the Chicago Province appears not to have been the result of ill-will, or mendacity, but rather the bland assumption that the abusive priest (one Father Donald J. McGuire) would follow orders. Wild gave the following charge to McGuire:

I ask that you not travel on any overnight trip with any boy or girl under the age of 18 and preferably even under the age of 21.

But Wild naively left it up to McGuire to police his own behavior.

A brief from plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Jesuits seems to show that Wild should have taken the situation far more seriously.

But even after Wild left the post of Provincial Superior the abuse continued. According to the New York Times:

The province sent Father McGuire in 1993 for a psychiatric examination and six months at a treatment center in Maryland — but in the week before he was to report to there, he was allowed to conduct a retreat in Phoenix, where he molested another boy, the documents indicate. As late as 1998, the new documents show, the Chicago provincial wrote a letter of “good standing” for Father McGuire to allow him to minister in a diocese, stating that “there is nothing to our knowledge in his background which would restrict any ministry with minors.” As the reports of abuse accumulated, the Chicago leaders issued one set of restrictions after another on Father McGuire, finally, in 2002, saying he could minister only to nuns in the Chicago region. But none of these directives were enforced, the court motion asserts. Father McGuire was formally removed from the priesthood in February 2008 after a conviction in Wisconsin and after a federal indictment had been issued in Illinois.

As we noted in our first post “Where this scandal is concerned, [Wild] looks no worse than many other Catholic clerics. But neither does he look any better.”

Wild Response

When this case was first exposed in the New York Times, Marquette’s response was absurdly tepid. The university announced:

As a Catholic and Jesuit university, Marquette University fully supports the protection of any victims of sexual abuse. Next week, the Marquette University Law School’s Restorative Justice Institute annual conference is on the topic of “International Dialogue on the Clergy Sexual Abuse Scandal,” which will include discussions with both church officials and victims.

That’s right. the university arranged a conference.

Wild’s current response, assuming it has not been forced on him by machinations of which we have no knowledge, is much more appropriate. Indeed, it looks like repentance and contrition commensurate with the sin — or at least, the best that can be done more than a quarter century after the offense.

Taking Wild’s statement at face value, we are inclined to think that God has forgiven him. We actually would not mind seeing his name on that dorm.