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.

Marquette Misleads: Why Cheryl Abbate Left the University

Cheryl Abbate, readers of this blog will remember, was the Marquette graduate instructor who was approached after class one day by a student who noted she had briefly mentioned gay marriage, and seemed to endorse it. The student made it clear he would have liked an opportunity to oppose gay marriage. She told him:

• “some opinions are not appropriate, such as racist opinions, sexist opinions”
•  “do you know if anyone in your class is homosexual?” . . . “don’t you think it would be offensive to them”
• “you don’t have a right in this class to make homophobic comments.” 
• “In this class, homophobic comments, racist comments, will not be tolerated.”

We blogged about the issue, and an uproar ensued. Abbate got some rather nasty e-mail messages (and noticed some rather unkind comments about herself surfing Internet discussion boards). But she got no actual threats.

Claiming to feel “unsafe,” she left Marquette for the University of Colorado, and Marquette, blaming us for the e-mails, began the process of revoking our tenure and firing us.

Marquette on Abbate’s Departure

Marquette claims it is all our fault that she left a cushy, comfortable position in Marquette’s Philosophy Department for the wilds of Colorado. For example, a Marquette “FAQ” claims that:

The graduate student left the university . . .  after she  was subject to a stream of threats and hateful messages.

A letter to us from Dean Rick Holz, dated January 31, 2015 outlines some of the unkind e-mails Abbate got, and claims:

Accordingly, and understandably, the student feared for her personal safety, and we posted a Public Safety Officer outside her classroom. In addition, as a result of your conduct and its consequences, Ms. Cheryl Abbate now has withdrawn from our graduate program and moved to another University to continue her academic career.

The Reality

The first thing that might raise some suspicion about Marquette’s claim is the simple fact that Colorado’s Philosophy Ph.D. programs ranks much higher than Marquette’s. One site that lists several different ranking metrics puts Colorado consistently in the top 40 programs in the country, and Marquette barely in the top 100.

Other sites ranking the top programs list Colorado, but fail to list Marquette at all, apparently because it is not in the top 60, and in another case because it is not in the top 50.

The Inside Story

More direct evidence comes from documents produced during the “discovery” process in our suit against Marquette.  James South, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences, and former Chair of the Philosophy Department explained in an e-mail to Dean Holz:

Friday, December 5, 2014 5:11 PM

Rick,

It’s complicated, but the short version is Cheryl is planning to leave Marquette and go to a different Ph.D. Program, which has offered her significant financial aid and is reputationally superior to MU. She’s working on a letter to Nancy [Snow] about this, which she is also going to send to Jeanne.

We can talk more on Monday. But several programs reached out to her and offered her aid and [she] finds MU to be very uncomfortable and toxic. She walks around afraid for her safety and feels unsupported by the senior faculty of the department.

James

Another e-mail on December 9, also from South to Holz, responds to Philosophy Chair Nancy Show’s version of events:

Hi Rick,

If you have a few minutes, could we talk about this tomorrow? Cheryl is not just leaving because of McAdams, but because she did not feel comfortable in the department — for several reasons, not least because of how Nancy [Snow] treated her, her research area, and her mentor, Susanne [Foster].

Anyway, I resent Nancy saying I felt threatened by McAdams and none of the senior faculty she mentioned have been harmed by McAdams in the way she suggests. Indeed, I’ve always felt much more annoyed by Nancy than by anything McAdams said and I’ve seen her intimidate and belittle her colleagues more than McAdams has ever done.

Sorry to unload on you, but I don’t want Nancy giving the wrong impression to people, and at some point she needs to be called to her own account.
Best,
James

We can’t speak to Abbate’s feeling of being “unsafe,” except to repeat that she received no actual threats, and to note that politically correct people on college campuses have weaponized fragility by claiming to feel “unsafe” in all sorts of circumstances.

It seems that on this, as on so many issues, Marquette has intentionally issued misleading and (in some cases) flatly false statements. All the while exuding pious rhetoric about its “Catholic mission.”

Amicus in Our Case: Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

Among several organizations what have filed amicus briefs in our case against Marquette University is the nation’s top organization protecting free expression on campus: the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Their brief is here.

The whole thing is worth reading, but here are some highlights:

The lower court’s ruling threatens professors’ free speech and academic freedom rights. While this case may, at first blush, seem to present a relatively narrow contract dispute between a private religious university and a tenured member of its faculty, the core dispute between Professor John McAdams and Marquette University must be viewed in the broader context in which it arose. Around the country, the free speech and academic freedom rights of faculty are being eroded by students, administrators, and members of the general public demanding censorship and by administrations caving to those demands. This capitulation is to the serious detriment of American higher education and ultimately the health of our democracy.

If a faculty member is not free to criticize, even publicly, the pedagogy of a fellow instructor, or to respond in kind to his or her critics, important institutional dialogues about teaching, scholarship, politics, and more will be deeply chilled. Faculty already report being reluctant to speak out and even to teach about sensitive issues for fear of professional repercussions. If the lower court’s ruling stands, the increasing chill on faculty expression will only intrude further as administrators around the country seize on the decision to justify disciplining faculty for public dissent on topics both internal and external to the university.

. . .

Echoing this national commitment to academic freedom, Marquette vows to protect the “the full and free enjoyment of legitimate personal or academic freedoms of thought, doctrine, discourse, association, advocacy, or action” — a promise bolstered by the assurance that “dismissal will not be used to restrain faculty members in their exercise of academic freedom or other rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution.” Handbook for Full-Time Faculty, Marquette Univ. (Aug. 27, 2013), available at http://www.marquette.edu/provost/307.php. This Court should grant review to hold Marquette true to its word. [link in document updated]

The lower court’s ruling threatens free speech and academic freedom by sanctioning the termination of a tenured professor simply for publicly criticizing what he believed to be dangerous pedagogical practices. The lower court correctly recognizes that “[a]cademic freedom allows both faculty members and students to engage in intellectual debate without fear of censorship or retaliation and it establishes a faculty member’s right to remain true to his or her pedagogical philosophy and intellectual commitments.” McAdams v. Marquette Univ., No. 16-cv-003396, at 24 (Wis. Cir. Ct. May 4, 2017). But despite seeming to grasp academic freedom’s crucial importance, the court dramatically undermines its utility by finding that criticizing a graduate student instructor by name in extramural writing is “professional misconduct” — indeed, a violation of the “protection against harassment and criticism” from faculty members to which graduate students are “entitled.” Id. at 25.

This broad limitation upon what faculty may say, both professionally and as citizens, is flatly incompatible with the lower court’s own understanding of academic freedom. How may a faculty member “engage in intellectual debate without fear of censorship or retaliation” if, by naming the proponent of an opposing view, he or she risks sanction? How might a faculty member “remain true to his or her pedagogical philosophy and intellectual commitments” if he or she is prohibited from rebutting critics by name? If termination is an acceptable consequence of the heated debate and sharpelbowed public criticism that pedagogical dispute may spark, then academic freedom is a dead letter.

The lower court attempts to justify McAdams’ punishment by arguing that his blog post violated the graduate student’s rights. “In short,” the court argues, “academic freedom gives a professor, such as Dr. McAdams, the right to express his views in speeches, writings and on the internet, so long as he does not infringe on the rights of others.” McAdams, supra, at 25. But the court fails to explain exactly how publicly criticizing a graduate student’s performance as an instructor “infringe[s]” upon his or her rights. As FIRE explained to Marquette University President Michael R. Lovell:

If criticism of the ideas proposed, and pedagogical choices made, by fellow instructors in this context are not protected by Marquette’s seemingly robust promises of academic freedom, then it is not clear what is. While in its public statements Marquette professes that “all of our graduate student teaching assistants are students first,” the fact is that teaching and its associated public responsibilities are a pillar of doctoral studies and that they inevitably introduce the possibility of having one’s teaching methods critiqued, perhaps publicly. Of course, graduate instructors in such positions enjoy the same rights of free speech and academic freedom to defend their ideas and pedagogical choices against such criticisms as their faculty peers.

Like Marquette during its disciplinary proceedings, the lower court fails to satisfactorily explain why McAdams may be punished, and his academic freedom abridged, because of the actions of others over whom he had no control. McAdams’ criticism was not incitement; it was neither “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” nor “likely to incite or produce such action.” Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447 (1969). He cannot fairly be held responsible for whatever those who read his blog entry may have communicated to the graduate student. If others unlawfully threatened or harassed the graduate student McAdams criticized, any proper remedy lies against them. Holding otherwise leaves faculty in the impossible position of being professionally liable for the unlawful actions of independent and unknown third parties.

The brief then gives accounts of professors who have been fired because of controversial statements they made. Interestingly, most of the cases involve leftist professors. This smacks of an argument being made to leftists saying, in effect “if you don’t stand up for the rights of a conservative professor, some of your buddies could be next to be fired.”

Whether this has any resonance, or whether leftists are so confident in their power on a typical campus that they are unmoved, is an interesting question.

Exposing the American Association of University Professors: Politicized Guild

From Campus Reform, an article that deals with our legal battle with Marquette, but also with similar cases nationwide.

A key point: the AAUP is less than forthcoming when the academic freedom of conservative professors is attacked. Some key passages:

“In the aftermath of [Trump’s] election, it has become evident that his election poses a grave threat to the principles that lie at the very heart of the AAUP: academic freedom, shared governance, and economic security for those engaged in teaching and research in higher education,” AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum declared at his organization’s 2017 annual meeting.

So the simple election of a president you don’t like is a threat to academia freedom? Thanks, AAUP, for making your political biases clear.

The article goes on to mention cases where the AAUP defended extreme and inflammatory statements from leftist professors, and notes the lack of support for conservative academics. And further:

The same goes for more politically-neutral professors who simply challenge campus orthodoxy, like the Christakis’s and, even more recently, Evergreen State College Professor Bret Weinstein, who was forced to hold classes off-campus after campus police were unable to protect him from a mob of students who had angrily confronted him for questioning the legitimacy of an event in which white people were requested to leave campus for a day.

The AAUP did not release a single statement in support of Weinstein’s “academic freedom,” even after the student protesters held the school’s president hostage in his own office to demand, among other things, that Weinstein be summarily suspended without pay.

“My thoughts regarding the AAUP are much like my thoughts about the ACLU,” said George Leef, director of research for the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. “It avoids battles where it doesn’t like one of the combatants, principle be damned.”

David Randall, director of communication for the National Association of Scholars (NAS), expressed similar sentiments, acknowledging that while the AAUP did play an instrumental role in [conservative Mike] Adams’ lawsuit, “it is easy to find cases in which conservatives on campus have suffered significant infringements of their academic freedom in which the AAUP has been mute.”

The author (Anthony Gockowski) devotes considerable attention to our case. While the AAUP objected to our suspension in December, 2014, it had no problem with Marquette’s attempt to fire us, and with the punishment imposed by a faculty panel.

An AAUP official informed us that we had received “due process” from the faculty panel.

“Their position was that I had received ‘due process’ from the Faculty Hearing Committee, and that was all I deserved,” McAdams told Campus Reform. “They seem to view ‘academic freedom’ as a collective right the faculty have, not a right that each faculty member has. Thus, views unpopular with the faculty generally will get little support from the AAUP.”

. . . McAdams noted that due process—especially on a “contemporary campus”—offers “scant protection to views unpopular among the faculty,” pointing out that “in addition to ideological bias, there is the fact that campus bureaucrats can load committees with people who are keen on currying favor with the administration.”

Worse, however, was the fact that there were several gross violations of due process on Marquette’s part. As we told AAUP official Greg Scholtz:

1. I was suspended in violation of Marquette’s own rules. You have already taken notice of this.
2. The Faculty Hearing Committee was supposed to issue a report within 90 days of the end of the hearings, but failed to meet that deadline by almost a month, finally delivering a report on January 19, when the deadline was December 23.
3. One member of the Faculty Hearing Committee had signed a statement attacking me for my blog posts, but declined to recuse herself.
4. Marquette refused to provide my legal team with evidence, possibly relevant to the case, that my legal team requested.
5. President Lovell, while claiming to follow the recommendation of the Faculty Hearing Committee, in fact added a proviso that I had to apologize for the blog post, and provide a loyalty oath pledging allegiance to vaguely defined “Marquette Guiding values” and “Marquette’s Mission.”
6. Marquette could point to no rule that I had violated, but the Faculty Hearing Committee engaged in what [my attorney] called a “multi-part balancing test” to come to the conclusion that I should be disciplined (but not fired). Restrictions on academic freedom (like all restrictions on speech) should be based on “bright line” prohibitions, and not vaguely defined and subjective “balancing tests.”

Scholtz blandly replied that he “never encountered a dismissal process that all parties agreed was entirely free of irregularities.”

Free Speech to Criticize Professors

But going beyond merely defending the right of leftist professors to say extreme and inflammatory things, the AAUP has condemned those media outlets that publicize those extreme and inflammatory things. For the organization, “academic freedom” means a lack of free speech when that speech criticizes leftist professors.

As David Randall suggested, the AAUP has to be viewed as a “politicized guild, and not as disinterested partisans of academic freedom.”

Setback: Judge Rules Against Warrior Blogger in Academic Freedom Case

VOWS TO APPEAL DECISION UPHOLDING MARQUETTE’S DECISION TO TERMINATE HIM

May 4, 2017 – Milwaukee, WI – In a 33-page ruling today, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge David Hansher found that Marquette University had the legal right to terminate tenured political science professor, Dr. John McAdams. The judge treated the Marquette committee that sat in judgment of McAdams as the equivalent of a neutral, third-party arbitrator, adopting its reasoning and conclusions wholesale. McAdams has already vowed to appeal the ruling.

In November, 2014, McAdams shared a story on his blog, Marquette Warrior, of an undergraduate student who had been told by a graduate student instructor, Cheryl Abbate, that he could not express his disagreement with same-sex marriage in her theory of ethics class because doing so would be homophobic and offensive. The story went national, resulting in a lot of bad press for Marquette.

In response, Marquette summarily suspended McAdams from his teaching duties and banned him from campus, then initiated proceedings to revoke his tenure and fire him. An internal faculty hearing committee (FHC) was convened to judge the dispute, but it suffered from serious procedural flaws, as Marquette withheld evidence from McAdams and allowed a clearly-biased professor to sit on the FHC. The FHC eventually recommended McAdams be suspended for two semesters. Instead, Marquette President Michael Lovell suspended McAdams indefinitely without pay unless he issued a written apology for his behavior – effectively firing him.

Judge Hansher adopted the FHC’s cramped and unsupported view of academic freedom and the First Amendment. He concluded that because naming Abbate could conceivably bring negative attention to her, McAdams was prohibited from doing so.

“No college professor in Wisconsin has any real protection if that’s the standard,” explained Rick Esenberg, President and General Counsel of WILL. “If a professor can be held responsible for the actions of every person who reads or even hears about what the professor writes, then they have no protections at all. By that standard, every professor who was publicly critical of McAdams should be fired too.”

Tom Kamenick, Deputy Counsel at WILL, sharply criticized the court’s decision to defer to Marquette’s own internal committee: “When two parties to a contract disagree about its application, courts cannot simply let one side decide how to interpret it. That’s like saying an employee who brings a sexual harassment complaint against another employee has to abide by the employer’s internal review that finds no wrong-doing occurred.”

The court also found no problem with Marquette allowing a clearly-biased member to sit on the FHC. Professor Lynn Turner signed an open letter shortly after the controversy broke out condemning McAdams and concluding he had violated his professional responsibilities. McAdams asked that she be removed, but the FHC refused. The court decided that as long as the FHC had considered the request, that was good enough – it didn’t matter how biased she was.

“This is another example of the increasing unwillingness of colleges to stand up for free speech. Hardly a day passes without an example of a speaker being shouted down, or disinvited, or a student being punished for some innocuous (but politically incorrect) comment on social media,” commented Dr. McAdams.

“This is just another step in a long process,” said Esenberg. “As Ronald Reagan said, ‘Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.’ We will take this case as far as it needs to be taken to vindicate McAdams’ – and all professors’ – rights to freedom of speech and academic freedom.”

Background on the case can be found here.

Tomorrow: Our Day in Court

Tomorrow we go into court to ask for summary judgment in our lawsuit against Marquette. It will be in Judge Hansher’s Courtroom (412 in the Milwaukee County Courthouse at 2:00 p.m. Open to the public). Of course, we have a very strong case, given the contractual guarantees of academic freedom that Marquette provides to all faculty (but doubtless regrets having provided to us).

Marquette claims to be firing us under a “discretionary clause” for supposed “conduct which clearly and substantially fail[s] to meet the standard of personal and professional excellence which generally characterizes University faculties.” But as our lawyers have pointed out, Faculty Statutes (incorporated into our contract with Marquette) hold that:

“[i]n no case, however, shall discretionary cause be interpreted so as to impair the full and free enjoyment of legitimate personal or academic freedom of thought, doctrine, discourse, association, advocacy or action.

Further:

dismissal will not be used to restrain faculty members in their exercise of academic freedom or other rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

Marquette has not charged us with any misconduct other than blogging.

What were they thinking? Probably that they could offer us some money and get us to walk away. But that hasn’t worked, and they have doubled down on a very poor legal case, having incurred lawyer’s fees which must now be well into six figures.

All the while increasing tuition, and continuing to beg alumni for money.

Background

For more details on the case, see James Wigderson’s article on Right Wisconsin.

An incisive take on the entire issue can be found on PJ Media. The author, one Tom Knighton, notes that Marquette, at one point, claimed it was firing us for violating Marquette’s “Guiding Values.” The notion that a vague statement of “values” can override black letter contract provisions is bizarre.

But note two of the supposed “Guiding Values:”

• Nurture an inclusive, diverse community that fosters new opportunities, partnerships, collaboration and vigorous yet respectful debate
• Live as servant leaders with a commitment to the Jesuit tradition and Catholic social teaching for all people, beliefs and faith traditions (emphasis in original)

Knighton asks:

Please, someone, explain to me how forbidding an opinion shared by a great many Catholics and Jesuits — the faiths Marquette is founded upon, after all — fosters “vigorous yet respectful debate”?

Sure sounds like Marquette has blatantly violated its own Guiding Principles.

He could have added: How can you claim to nurture a commitment to Catholic social teaching when you forbid it being expressed in the classroom.

Marquette has blundered badly in this case. But it’s not a random bit of incompetence. It’s a reflection of the intolerant political correctness and suffuses the Marquette administration.

Marquette President Michael Lovell: One of the Scariest People of 2016

From Watchdog.org, by John Bicknell, a list of the “scariest people of 2016,” and holding the very dishonorable position of number 8 is Marquette President Michael Lovell.

Marquette University President Michael Lovell has brought back the Inquisition to Catholic universities.

When political science professor John McAdams criticized Philosophy Department instructor Cheryl Abbate on his blog in November 2014 for not allowing a student to defend Catholic teaching on same-sex marriage in her classroom, Lovell dropped the PC hammer on McAdams by suspending the professor and banning him from campus pending termination.

McAdams’ crime, in the view of Marquette University, was criticizing Abbate publicly because, in addition to being an instructor, she was also a prized graduate student. But what made it worse was that McAdams’ blog post went “viral” and Abbate received hate mail, even though McAdams did not encourage anyone to contact her.

McAdams appealed his termination and was placed in limbo while a faculty committee debated his fate. The suspension continued until April of this year when the panel completed its investigation. It recommended his suspension continue through the end of 2016, but that wasn’t good enough for Lowell.

Lowell said McAdams could not be reinstated until he acknowledged the blog post was “reckless,” accepted the judgment of the faculty committee and expressed regret over the hostile emails Abbate received. McAdams refused, instead demanding that Marquette live up to the promise of academic freedom in McAdams’ contract.

Now McAdams is suing to get reinstated, and the two sides are scheduled to appear in court Feb. 2.

Lovell’s actions have placed Marquette University on the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s list of Ten Worst Universities for Free Speech. Meanwhile, McAdams, a nationally respected expert on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, is unable to teach students or even visit the campus.

But Lovell continues to govern Marquette, turning a once-proud university into a bastion of political correctness.

Marquette Tribune Taken to Task for Intolerance of Academic Freedom

Given the leftist bias of journalists, and especially schools of communication, it was not a huge surprise that Marquette’s student newspaper, the Tribune, came out in support of Marquette’s attempt to fire this blogger.

Of course, the editorial taking that position was a model of journalistic bias and illogic.

Three commenters quickly responded, taking the paper to task. First, Paul Quirk:

Punishing McAdams for what third parties wrote to Abbate is obviously not justified. For one thing, he has criticized a lot of people, and praised others, over many years, and there has been no other case of such abuse. Someone who reads your editorial may threaten McAdams. Will you expect to be punished?

The language of the post was not “demeaning,” unless all sharp criticism is demeaning.

In any case, none of this matters. Freedom of speech and academic freedom do not have a limiting condition: “as long as the speaker is (in the authorities’ opinion) polite, no one is seriously inconvenienced, and no one who hears or reads the expression acts improperly.”

The reason that all the significant national commentary (FIRE, AAUP, the Atlantic, Slate, the Washington Post, not to mention conservative outlets) has rejected the University’s position is that the principles here are not in doubt. If the University fires McAdams, he will sue and he will win. (BTW, FIRE participates in such lawsuits, and thus far, has never lost.)

It would be better if the University faced up to its serious, damaging mistake and dropped the matter. The stalling tells you how strong its case is.

Quirk is a Marquette alum, and Phil Lind Chair in US Politics and Representation, Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia. Quirk is a liberal, and apparently one of the old-style liberals: the sort who liked to argue politics. The sort who, if a conservative student spoke up in class, would welcome the debate and discussion.

The kind that are becoming much rarer in academia.

The next comment was from Marquette’s own Dan Maguire:

The Editorial on McAdams misses the main point of this case. McAdams was severely punished without due process. The American Association of University Professors allows for the suspension of a professor but never without due process.

Maguire has openly supported us in a previous statement. In that statement, he notes that we have excoriated him on this blog, which is absolutely true.

So why would he support our academic freedom? Maguire is apparently a happy warrior. He will dole out criticism on popes, archbishops, and presidents of Marquette University. But when he is criticized in return, he doesn’t whine about it.

A final commenter is Sterling Silver (not a pseudonym):

The snowflake response to free speech is embarrassing. I’d like to point out that the two actions you predominantly go after McAdams for were actually not done by him. His release of the blog post may have “offended” some individuals, but the nationwide criticism and death threats were from other people, not McAdams. Also, Abatte’s choice to leave after the criticism was also her choice, not something McAdams told her to do or pressured her into. Ultimately, she made the final decision.

The use of the Nov 12, 2015 story is also laughable. Although I am proud of the students for having a safe and responsible protest, protesting in support of the student actions at the University of Missouri goes against the idea of the First Amendment. You want freedom of speech and (later mentioned in the story) freedom of consequence but when the protest in Missouri blocked other journalists, the students denied both freedom of speech and freedom of consequence, even though the journalists were looking to ask questions. Those actions, the silent protest at Marquette, and the editorial seem to suggest that rather than enjoying the freedom of free speech, we should focus on suppression because it might offend someone or because it bothers people.

But, rather than looking for things to be offended by, students at Marquette should learn to grow up and get stronger in the face of adversity. Your not always going to be told that the actions you’ve made are great or may be criticized with offensive language in life, but how you respond is one of the ways you go from being a kid to an adult. Going after this list and its view on the First Amendment is child’s play.

(Also, the university has the right to hire and fire anybody, but to fire a tenured professor for a blog post is why the story has gone national).

The Tribune’s support of the Black Lives Matter protest, and the protest in sympathy with students at the University of Missouri, is revealing.

Black Lives Matter is a movement that fosters hatred of law enforcement, and has routinely called, before all the facts are in, for the arrest and charging of police officers who shoot black suspects. In several cases the officer in question was justified in shooting a black who attacked him.

Leftist students at the University of Missouri bullied and forced out of office their president over supposed racial incidents, some of which were faked or nonexistent, and none of which the president could do anything about.

Of course, the Tribune could have reasonably endorsed the right of Marquette students to protest in these cases.

But given that they endorsed free speech for the student protesters, but not the right of an undergraduate to argue against gay marriage, and not our right to blog about the stifling of the undergraduate, only one inference is possible.

The Tribune only favors free speech for people with whom they agree.

Marquette Tribune: Coming Down Against Free Speech for Warrior Blogger

One expects a liberal/left bias on the part of the mainstream media, but where campus free speech is concerned, those folks have been pretty solidly behind free expression, and rather critical of campus intolerance.

But that doesn’t apply to the fledgling journalists at the Marquette Tribune. They have endorsed Marquette’s attempt to fire us in an editorial that is breathtaking in its lack of logic and tortured reasoning.

The bias starts in the description of the incident that provoked our blog post of November 9, 2014:

Last year, Marquette was embroiled in controversy after McAdams was suspended from campus in November 2014 when he wrote a post on his blog, the Marquette Warrior. The post criticized the way former teaching assistant Cheryl Abbate handled a disagreement in class with a student concerning gay marriage in a Theory of Ethics philosophy class.

How did she “handle a disagreement?”

When the student confronted her after class, and made it clear that he wanted the opportunity in class to argue against gay marriage, she told him “you don’t have a right in this class to make homophobic comments.” She further asked if there were any gay students in class, and said that any gay students would be offended if arguments against gay marriage were allowed. She went on to say: “In this class, homophobic comments, racist comments, will not be tolerated.”

The Tribune, in other words, entirely sanitized the intolerant comments of Abbate.

The Tribune goes on:

McAdams used his personal blog to demean a student. Abbate may have been a teaching assistant, but she was still a student equally deserving of the right to free speech, whether she chose to engage in the disagreement or not.

Thus reporting on the intolerant conduct of an instructor becomes “demeaning” a student. Abbate was not merely a student, she was the Instructor of Record of the class, a person in authority over the student. When the incident occurred, she was 29 years old and a member of the U.S. military, and had been teaching the course for two years.

But somehow, for the Tribune, Abbate calling an undergraduate a “homophobe” for opposing gay marriage is not demeaning.

But what is out and out bizarre is the invocation of “free speech” to defend the intolerant behavior of Abbate. Abbate, who had authority over the student, told him he was not allowed to speak. We, who had no authority over Abbate, criticized her. Marquette has tried to fire us for criticizing her.

The Tribune doesn’t think the student had a right to free speech, and doesn’t think we have a right to free speech. The only free speech they are defending is the right to shut up speech.

Threats?

The Tribune goes on:

McAdams has written skeptically about Marquette’s administration, other professors and various organizations on his blog. But when he publicly shamed Abbate, he stopped working to create an educational environment. After McAdams’ post, Abbate received threats against her life and eventually left Marquette because of the intense criticism.

So the undergraduate, who wanted to discuss gay marriage in class, had an “educational environment,” but Abbate, who wanted to stifle the student, was the victim?

The claim that Abbate received “threats against her life” is simply untrue, as she admitted on her blog.

She did received some quite nasty comments. Of course, anybody whose misconduct is exposed by journalists might be the object of nasty communications. This had never happened with our blog until the November 9 post.  But when fraternity brothers of Sigma Alpha Epsilon at the University of Oklahoma engaged in a racist chant and it was reported, some of them received death threats. Nobody seems to be blaming the media for that.

Promoting Only One Sort of Speech

The Tribune then goes on to laud Marquette for its efforts to promote free speech:

For Marquette to make FIRE’s list solely for the McAdams controversy is an unfair representation of the university. In placing Marquette on this list, FIRE overlooked the university’s several efforts over the past year to foster freedom of speech.

For example, Nov. 12, 2015, Marquette students held a silent protest standing in solidarity with University of Missouri students outside of Raynor Library. The protest happened shortly after Missouri’s president Tim Wolfe resigned when he mishandled racial controversy on campus. Faculty and administration here at Marquette, including University President Michael Lovell, stood in solidarity with the students.

Additionally, on Dec. 8, 2014, a Black Lives Matter ‘die-in’ took place on the second floor of the Alumni Memorial Union with no interference from the university.

So for the Tribune, free speech is for leftist student organizations. It’s not for students who want to oppose gay marriage, or for professors who blog about the stifling of discussion on campus.

That is to say, it’s only for people with whose politics the Tribune editors agree.

Tonight: Warrior Blogger to Speak on Academic Freedom

We are late posting this, but as of now (Thursday morning), there are a few places left.

Join

Wisconsin Policy Research Institute

for a conversation with
Professor John McAdams

“Safe Zones & Snowflakes:
The Future of Free Speech in Academia.”

Thursday, January 21st, 2016
The Wisconsin Club
Deutscher Room

5:30PM-7:00PM
5:30 – 6:00 p.m. Registration & Reception
6:00 – 6:10 p.m. Introduction
6:10 – 6:30 p.m. Professor John McAdams
6:30 – 6:50 p.m. Q&A
Cost: $15 registration includes hors d’oeuvres.
CASH BAR

To register: Go to www.wpri.org/Contribute.htm