Marquette’s Suspension of Marquette Warrior Violated Marquette’s Own Rules

We just yesterday reported that we have been “suspended” from our duties at Marquette, due to a blog post of ours that criticized a Philosophy instructor who informed a student that gay marriage could not be discussed in her class because any opposition to the policy would be “homophobic” and would likely “offend” any gay students in the class.

The “suspension” is a bit of a joke, since it’s Christmas break and we aren’t teaching. We are only working on a manuscript, and are allowed to go to campus to do that.

Leave aside issues of academic freedom, and the fact that Marquette, when faced with a brouhaha that was dying down,  chose to heat it up to white hot.  There is the fact that in suspending us Marquette violated its own rules, which can be found here.

Section 307.03

In all cases of nonrenewal, suspension, or termination for absolute or discretionary cause, except Section 307.02(1) and (3), death, and permanent, total disability, the appropriate appointing authority of the University shall notify the faculty member in writing of the University's action. The notice shall include:

(1) The statute allegedly violated; the date of the alleged violation; the location of the alleged violation; a sufficiently detailed description of the facts constituting the violation including the names of the witnesses against the faculty member.

(2) The nature of the University’s contemplated action, with a specification of the date or dates upon which such action is to become effective with respect to faculty status, duties, salary, and benefit entitlements, respectively.

(3) Such notice shall be personally delivered and service shall operate from date of such delivery; if in the exercise of reasonable diligence it is not possible to personally serve the faculty member, it may be served by certified mail addressed to the faculty member’s last known place of residence, and service shall operate from date of mailing.

In fact, all of Section 1 was violated by the letter of suspension we got, which did not specify the statute allegedly violated, the date of the alleged violation, the location of the alleged violation, and any of the supposed facts of the violation.

Since this was about a blog post, there were plenty of witnesses, but none of them were named.

We were also told that the “university is continuing to review your conduct” but were not told the nature of any “contemplated action.”

Did university officials rattle off the letter without consulting counsel?

Did they think they could blow off their published rules? In any legal action, Marquette’s failure to follow its own rules will have negative consequences.

We have first rate legal counsel: Rick Esenberg and his colleagues at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

Marquette’s inept handling of this whole issue has been obvious. They appear to be on track to get into yet more trouble.

Reprisal: Marquette Warrior Under “Investigation” By University

It created more controversy than any blog other post we have done: an account of a Philosophy instructor at Marquette who told a student that gay marriage could not be discussed in her class since any opposition would be “homophobic” and would “offend” any gay students in the class. Not only did the story echo among Catholic outlets and sites dedicated to free speech on campus, but it created considerable blow back among leftist academics, who pretty much demanded our head on a pike.

Today we got an e-mail from Dean Richard Holz:

Dear John:

The university is continuing to review your conduct and during this period--and until further notice--you are relieved of all teaching duties and all other faculty activities, including, but not limited to, advising, committee work, faculty meetings and any activity that would involve your interaction with Marquette students, faculty and staff. Should any academic appeals arise from Fall 2014 semester, however, you are expected to fulfill your obligations in that specific matter.

Your salary and benefits will continue at their current level during this time.

You are to remain off campus during this time, and should you need to come to campus, you are to contact me in writing beforehand to explain the purpose of your visit, to obtain my consent and to make appropriate arrangements for that visit. I am enclosing with this letter Marquette’s harassment policy, its guiding values statement, the University mission statement, and sections from the Faculty Handbook, which outline faculty rights and responsibilities; these documents will inform our review of your conduct.

Sincerely,

Richard C. Holz, Ph.D. Dean

We wrote him back and asked what the charges against us are. He failed to respond. Since we have done nothing particularly controversial lately besides blog about the Philosophy instructor (one Cheryl Abbate), we have to assume that’s what it is about.

The fact that Holz sent the “harassment policy” suggests that somebody thinks that merely blogging about questionable conduct by a Philosophy instructor constitutes “harassment.” Marquette’s harassment policy is absurdly vague and includes “behavior is intimidating, hostile or demeaning or could or does result in mental, emotional or physical discomfort, embarrassment, ridicule or harm.” That’s right, even mental discomfort (which should be a normal part of having one’s opinions challenged in a university) is considered harassing.

However, the behavior must be directed toward a protected class (color, race, national origin, ethnicity, religion, disability, veteran status, age, gender or sexual orientation), and leftist philosophers are not a protected class.

As for having to remain off campus — in effect, being treated like a potential terrorist — we don’t know where that came from. The last time we were accused of harassment (it was sexual harassment, since we told an entire class that feminists grossly exaggerate the incidence of college date rape) we were not treated like a terrorist.

We insisted to Holz that we need to come to campus to complete a manuscript we are working on, he said that was OK.

Whether Marquette officials really want to punish us for blogging, or whether they simply feel the need for a pro forma “investigation” of charges someone has brought, we don’t know. Either would be gross misconduct on the part of Marquette officials. Any attempt to censor our blog not only would violate the canons of academic freedom, but would reverse years of precedent, since we have been free to criticize things going on at Marquette for nearly ten years now. And an “investigation” constitutes a form of harassment. Any charges against us should have been summarily dismissed.

Marquette, in other words, has again shown itself to be timid, overly bureaucratic and lacking any commitment to either its Catholic mission or free expression.

Marquette: No Attempt to Censor Marquette Warrior (Yet)

A huge brouhaha erupted when we blogged about an instructor in the Philosophy Department who told a student (in an after class conversation) that his opinions in opposition to gay marriage were “homophobic” and that discussion of the issue had to be banned since any gay students in class would be “offended.”

 It went national in outlets that were appalled at the suppression of the Catholic Church’s position at a so called “Catholic university,” and at outlets that support free expression on college campuses.

It also created a backlash among leftist and politically correct academics who apparently agreed with the actions of the instructor, one Cheryl Abbate.

One of the nastiest (and most hypocritical) attacks came from some Marquette department chairs in humanities and the social sciences.

 Marquette reacted to the uproar with the following statement from the Provost:

I am writing to address recent discussions within the campus community concerning the issues of collegiality, professionalism and academic freedom.

The university has guidelines and processes to ensure that all of our faculty, staff and students are treated fairly. These processes allow us to thoughtfully address both incidents themselves and the ways that others have reacted to them.

Shortly thereafter, Brian Dorrington (Marquette PR guy) told various media outlets that Marquette was:

. . . reviewing both a concern raised by a student and a concern raised by a faculty member. We are taking appropriate steps to make sure that everyone involved is heard and treated fairly. In compliance with state and federal privacy laws, we will not publicly share the results of the reviews.

This claim of confidentiality, of course, sounds like a nice strategy for evading issues and keeping everybody happy. They can believe they are getting what they want from the Marquette administration, but that the whole thing must be kept “confidential.”

Consequences?

We don’t know what consequences came of all this, with the exception of the fact that Arts & Sciences Dean Rick Holz wrote a letter of reprimand to Philosophy Department Chair Nancy Snow for her verbal assault on us in a university café (in the presence of a prospective job candidate).

Marquette has made no attempt to censor the Marquette Warrior, nor have we received any sort of reprimand.

It would be nice to believe that this is because Marquette values academic freedom. But the reality is probably less flattering to Marquette.

Holtz Investigates

On Wednesday, November 19, we got an e-mail from Kim Patterson in the office of Holz. It said Holz wanted to meet with us.

We e-mailed him and made it clear to him that we would not accept any sort of reprimand or attempt to censor our blog. He wrote back with a conciliatory message:

Hi John. I think there has been a misunderstanding. I would like to meet with you tomorrow to just gather facts and listen to your side of the issue. As I have indicated before, I was asked by the Provost to gather information and do the fact finding investigation. So I have listened to the recording by the student and read your blog. I would like to hear from you directly and also hear from you about your run-in with Nancy Snow.

And then in a later e-mail:

Hi John. Your blog is your business but we will have to discuss aspects of what you blogged about as I think it is relevant to the issues. I am not planning to “reprimand, censure, or harass” you in any way. I simply want to have a conversation with you so I have a better understanding about what happened here.

Fair enough, we thought, and we even apologized to Holz for our initial testy response.

Intimidation

When we finally arrived at the meeting (on November 20) Holz was congenial enough and got some factual information from us.

But then he offered us some advice that could be interpreted as an attempt at intimidation (although he probably did not see it that way).

He noted that we had (before we went live with the story) e-mailed Cheryl Abbate from our Marquette account asking her for her version of what transpired. He suggested that we should keep our blogging separate from our Marquette business. He suggested we should consult Marquette’s guideline for computer use on that.

We told him that our blogging is a form of publication (if not a particularly exalted one), and research for publication is most certainly something for which we can use Marquette resources. We told him he would be opening a “can of worms” if he made an issue of that.

Then, worse, he told us we should consult Marquette’s guidelines on harassment – the implicit suggestion being that we were “harassing” people with our blogging. We told him we know the guidelines quite well, and that Marquette’s guidelines are absurdly broad, but that for anything to be called “harassment” it has to be directed against a “protected class.” People with politically correct leftist political opinions are not a protected class.

We asked Holz if he had completed the university “training” about harassment, and he replied that he had. We pointing out that the “training” clearly teaches that merely expressing opposition to gay marriage to a fellow employee could be considered “harassment.” He blandly replied [paraphrasing] “yes, the definition is getting broader.”

His response gave no indication that he had any reservations about defining the mere expression of a political opinion as harassment.

We explained to him that if we got anything from Marquette that even vaguely resembled a reprimand we would call our lawyer, and that “we have a lawyer who loves to sue Marquette.”

We have heard nothing further from Marquette

Evaluating Holz

Holz probably didn’t even perceive his statements as questionable. He came across as a conventional, bland, risk averse bureaucrat. Such bureaucrats find free expression problematic, since it creates complaints to the bureaucrats. Holz probably thought he was giving us good advice as to how to avoid controversy — and of course, our avoiding controversy would avoid controversy for him. He apparently didn’t understand that we don’t mind controversy.

And especially not at Marquette University, were outrageous excesses of political correctness happen quite regularly.

Evaluating Marquette

Generally, free speech can prevail on a college campus, but only if the speaker is willing to make a stink about it. The preferred mode of operation among campus bureaucrats is to quietly “handle” conflict, and to chill free expression.

Often, a stifling climate of political correctness can do the job for them, as students come to understand that they will be attacked and derided for stands unpopular among the politically correct activists, and as faculty avoid conflict.

All of this is the result of an unfortunate confluence of intolerance among the faculty (especially in the humanities and social sciences) and conformity and timidity among vision-less administrators.

In this, Marquette is probably no worse than a lot of other universities, but it’s also no better.

Marquette Warrior Blogger Threatened, Bullied by Provost, Dean and Department Chair

We just got out of a meeting with Provost John Pauly, Interim Arts & Sciences Dean Rev. Philip J. Rossi, and Political Science Department Chair Barrett L. McCormick.

This was the meeting we were summoned to by Pauly.

Pauly, in an e-mail to us, said the meeting was about “some of the ongoing potential conflicts between your role as Marquette professor and employee, and independent blogger-journalist.”

The bottom line: all three – Pauly, Rossi and McCormick – want us to entirely stop blogging about student organizations. Well . . . not entirely. Pauly made it clear that it is fine with him if we commend student organizations. That’s right: a former journalism instructor is demanding biased journalism!

Pauly claimed to have no problem with our blogging about faculty and administrators, but claimed our blogging about student affairs has been out of line. How much of this was a genuine concern (some of it probably was) and how much was the result of an ideological bias from liberal administrators toward a conservative blogger (there was almost certainly some of that too) we can’t say.

Two specific instances were mentioned. First, we called the listed home number of a student, talked to (apparently) her father and left a polite message asking for a return call, explaining that we were working on a blog post about The Vagina Monologues (the student was listed as the Marquette contact on vday.org). Apparently, the student’s parents freaked. All three administrators (Pauly, Rossi and McCormick) condemned the call saying that faculty should never call the parents of students. They said that the parents should have been in Fr. Wild’s office loudly complaining about it.

We replied that we were calling the listed number of the student (and had no way of knowing that she was living with her parents), and that it’s standard practice for a journalist to call a potential source at home. But Pauly, Rossi and McCormick explicitly stated that we should somehow have known that the parents would freak. We were accused of merely offering “rationalizations.”

All thee insisted that we don’t have any of the prerogatives of a journalist, since the role of a professor trumps that of a faculty blogger.

The other issue raised was the fact that we had mentioned a student’s research paper, and were accused of “criticizing” it. In reality, we did not mention the student’s name, and the point of the blog post was that “‘gender studies’ has been added to ‘women’s studies’ [which] signals a move toward a homosexual emphasis, as shown by one of the papers completed by a WGST fellow this summer . . . .” The blog post was, quite simply, a comment on the fact that the Women’s and Gender Studies program has begun to slip “queer studies” into the university.

Pauly, Rossi and McCormick lamely replied that people could find the name of the student (we included the title of the paper, which could be googled), and that some people knew that we had supposedly “criticized the student.” In fact, nothing was said that was favorable or unfavorable about the student.

A Sandbox?

McCormick, using a metaphor that was supremely insulting to students, insisted that student activities are a “sandbox,” and that faculty should never comment on what student organizations do.

We pointed out that, in the issues they brought up, Marquette as an institution had been the issue. The Vagina Monologues will be sponsored by Social and Cultural Sciences, and the post that “criticized student research” was about the Women’s and Gender Studies Program.

We further pointed out that when students do high-profile public things, there is a legitimate news interest in what they do. In fact, it serves students well to learn that when they do highly visible controversial public things in some official role, they might get criticized.

Further, what student organizations do has consequences for the University. When Fr. Wild announced that Marquette is going to provide domestic partner benefits for gay and lesbian couples, he explicitly cited a resolution calling for that from Marquette University Student Government. If student organizations can affect Marquette University policy, it’s hard to see how they should be exempt from scrutiny.

As the meeting moved on, Rossi and McCormick became more ad hominem, Rossi accusing us of having a “blind spot,” and McCormick asserting that nobody he knew felt that our blogging about student organizations was acceptable. Since we’ve gotten multiple supporting e-mails, that says more about McCormick’s circle of friends than about what “everybody believes.”

All three implied (and sometimes stated) that we had been guilty of some violation of professional ethics, but could not explain what that would be, beyond McCormick’s “sandbox” metaphor, and the general notion that faculty should never publicly say anything negative about a student, even a student in a very public role doing something controversial.

We were willing to make only one concession: we assured the group that we would be more careful in the future about mentioning student’s names. (It typically isn’t that significant who the student is anyway.) But that wasn’t enough.

They hung tough with the position that we should never comment on student affairs, and we were threatened by both Pauly and McCormick saying that we would “be here [in a meeting like this] again” if we persisted in blogging about the activities of student groups.

Needless to say, we will continue to blog about activities on campus, and when the actions of student organizations have substantial news interest, we will report them. And we will be critical when appropriate.