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.

Marquette Warrior Blogger Harassed by Provost John Pauly

We’ve been pretty critical of various Marquette officials on this blog, so it wouldn’t be surprising to get some pushback. We’ve particularly been critical of Provost John Pauly.

Pauly was the key figure behind the attempt to hire activist lesbian dean candidate Jodi O’Brien. But even worse is the fact that Pauly initiated a policy of putting more classes at 8:00 a.m. This was vastly unpopular with both students and faculty, but Pauly claimed that was necessary to better utilize Marquette’s physical plant, and claimed that the choice was between offering more 8:00 a.m. classes and building new buildings.

We showed that this claim was bogus. A little research turned up the fact that there were plenty of classrooms available at 9:00 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., and this without any pressure to move classes to 8:00 a.m.

When our blog post circulated around the campus, Pauly simply doubled down on his plan, producing a PowerPoint presentation that supposedly showed our data were wrong, and surreptitiously showed it to deans and department chairs.

We got wind of this, and did a new analysis, taking into account all the claims that Pauly had made about our initial analysis, and continued to find many available classrooms at more desirable times. Eventually, Pauly had to cave, and in what must have been a humiliating retreat, rescinded the 8:00 a.m. mandate.

Pushback From Pauly

Thus we were not entirely surprised when we got the following e-mail from Pauly.

Hi, John,

I have asked my assistant, Kim Newman, to set up a meeting between you, me, Barry McCormick, and Phil Rossi. My concern is that the recent case of Anahi Sanchez illustrates some of the ongoing potential conflicts between your role as Marquette professor and employee, and independent blogger-journalist. My hope is that our conversation might clarify some of those role expectations going forward. A half hour should do the trick.

Best wishes!
John Pauly
Provost

The Pretext

So just what was the deal with Anahi Sanchez?

Back in February, we learned that “The Vagina Monologues” is to be performed on campus. A source tipped us off that Marquette performances were listed on the vday.com website. We checked that out, and found that feminist activist Anahí Sánchez was listed as the Marquette contact.

A link on the vday.org website led to her e-mail. So we sent her an e-mail, asking for confirmation, and especially under what auspices the play would be performed. This was an issue in 2007, when Student Affairs refused to let a student group sponsor the play (which is wildly at odds with Catholic teaching about sexuality). But academic units are free to mount whatever programs then want, and thus the Honors Program was the sponsor.

Here is our e-mail:

Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 9:24 AM

To: Sanchez, Anahi

According to the Vagina Monologues website, there are going to be performances on campus, and you are the contact.

Can you confirm that this is the case?

Under what auspices will the performance be staged (a student organization, Honors Program, etc.)?

Any information you can give me will be appreciated. If you want to call me at 288-3425, I’d be happy to talk.

John McAdams

Department of Political Science
Marquette Warrior Blog

When we hadn’t heard from her in a few hours, we found her home phone number at Peoplefinders.com, and called it. A fellow, sounding to be middle-aged (her father, perhaps) answered and we left a message asking her to call us. We shortly got an e-mail from her:

The Vagina Monologues will be performed on campus through the women of Empowerment.

If you would like to know more feel free to ask me through email or if you feel the need to call me please do so on my cell phone (414) [redacted]. I know you called my home earlier today. I don’t recall putting that information up on the website but if I did that is not correct, so I apologize for that.

Anahí Sánchez

National M.E.Ch.A. Co-chair

Marquette University ‘11

We, of course, were happy with this response, since it clearly implied that she was willing to share information. But we had no information yet, and so put up a post with the information we had.

After learning that Social and Cultural Sciences would sponsor the event, we learned that it had been removed from the vday.com website. So we wrote her again on February 28.

Hi, Anahi,

Could you tell me what the current deal with The Vagina Monologues is? . . . The Marquette performance is not now listed on the Vday website. I’m just trying to do an update on this, and wondering what the deal is.

John McAdams

We got no response. We tried calling her cell phone three (if memory serves) times, but it rang off the hook. So we gave up.

On March 9, we finally got around to putting up another blog post on the event, with the time and date having been gotten from Special Events. But Sánchez appears to have somehow felt aggrieved, since she complained to university officials (and eventually to Pauly), not that she has been harassed, but that she did not know whether we were trying to contact her in our role as a faculty member or our role as a blogger!

Given the innocuous nature of the information we were asking for, a stray person off the street had the right to e-mail her (again her e-mail was listed on the vday.org website). This, it seems, was a sufficient pretext for Pauly to summon us, Political Science Chair Barry McCormick and Interim Arts & Sciences Dean Phil Rossi to his office. The meeting is set up for this Friday, and we will report on it here.

Pauly Is Badly Compromised in Dealing With This

We sent Pauly this e-mail on Monday (2/28) explaining the problem he has:

John,

The problem is that you are badly compromised in dealing with this issue, since I’ve been quite critical of you on my blog. So when this breaks it will look for all the world like you are seizing on some trivial issue as a form of “payback” for the tough time I’ve given you.

That, at least, is the appearance, and appearances matter.

You might also ask yourself whether this would look to anybody like any kind of substantial issue. What you have is one . . . young lady who complains that she didn’t know whether I was making an inquiry as a professor or a blogger. But that didn’t matter. I had a right to ask in either role. Indeed, since she was listed at the Marquette contact for the Vagina Monologues on the vday.com website, a stray person off the street had every right to contact her and ask innocuous questions about the forthcoming performance.

So that’s going to look like a pretext, rather than a problem of any sort.

Clearly you should recuse yourself from this “issue.” If you really think it is an issue, kick it down to Barry and Phil.

You should also call one or two of your former colleagues in journalism, and ask them whether they see any issue here.

Given that you could have simply called me, and we could have talked about this, your e-mails, involving Barry and Phil looks for all the world like harassment.

And if you insist on summoning me over to talk to you three, I can only interpret that as further harassment.

You could just let this drop, or you could just call me, and I’ll be happy to listen to any concerns you have.

Please think about this. Just trying to give some friendly advice.

John

Pauly hung tough, and insisted on a meeting with us, McCormick and Rossi. Remember, on the 8:00 a.m. class issue, Pauly hung tough on an untenable position.

But of course, we don’t know what his position is here. At one point in the e-mail exchange, he implied that our signing the initial e-mail “Department of Political Science/Marquette Warrior Blog” was the issue. Is it all this trivial?

Clearly, blogging is an academic activity, protected by the canons of academic freedom. Many academics have blogs, including those in the Marquette Law School, Mark Johnson in Theology, Matt Wion in Philosophy, and Steve Byers in Journalism. National blogs run by academics include Althouse, and The Volokh Conspiracy.

Virtually all academics have a legitimate interest in public affairs, including the internal politics of the institutions where they work. And blogging is a form of publication, although admittedly more like a newspaper op-ed that an article in a scholarly journal. But academics have a right to academic freedom in writing op-eds and articles for the popular press, as Marquette’s heretical theologian Dan Maguire demonstrates with great frequency.

But university bureaucrats don’t like being criticized, and especially don’t like being criticized by those supposedly “below” them in the hierarchy. We’ll find out, soon enough, what Pauly’s position is.

Rossi Will Be Interim Dean

An e-mail to faculty from Provost John Pauly:

I wanted you to know at least a little in advance that later this afternoon, through the regularly scheduled News Briefs, we will announce the appointment of the interim dean and two new associate deans for academic affairs for the college. Rev. Philip J. Rossi, S.J., professor of theology, will become interim dean, effective July 1. Dr. Belén Castañeda, associate professor of Spanish, and Dr. William Donaldson, professor of chemistry, will be the new associate deans, effective August 1.

More information on all these folks is here.

Our first impression is that none of these folks has a particularly high ideological profile. None of them, for example, signed the petition objecting to the fact that Marquette refused to hire lesbian dean candidate Jodi O’Brien.

(That in no way rules out the possibility that one or more of them thought that hiring O’Brien would have been a dandy thing.)

Rossi, particularly, is somebody whom our sources simply cannot peg as liberal or conservative. He has strong internationalist leanings, and has worked to make the Theology Department more internationalist in orientation. But that is not, in fact, necessarily a trendy or fashionable thing to do. The Third World and the “Global South” tend to be orthodox, and to supply a large share of “vocations” for the Church.

And being a specialist in Kant (which Rossi is) isn’t particularly trendy either.

Rossi has been at Marquette for 35 years, was associate dean for graduate affairs for three years in the 2000s, and has chaired the Department of Theology several times. He has extensive committee service under his belt. He knows where the bodies are buried.

In this coming year, we face the likelihood of real battles over a new Arts & Sciences Dean, and (even more so) over a new President.

One can never be sure how these things will work out, but it’s distinctly possible that the secular left on campus -- its appetite whetted by the fight over O’Brien and better organized than before -- will make a major push for a liberal, secularizing candidate for either or both positions.

So the Administration, in picking Rossi, has opted for steady, competent leadership. We don’t expect a lot of drama from the Arts & Sciences College for a while, and we’re happy about that.