Marquette Professor Makes Flippant, Innocuous Comment in Class, Is Banned from Campus

Sometimes, of course, professors make comments in class that are out of bounds.  And sometimes students get upset about comments that are, in reality, fairly innocuous.  A little of the former and a lot of the latter happened a few weeks ago at Marquette.

According to Marquette Tribune:

According to a call received by the Tribune, a criminology professor was asked to leave his class after a student reported feeling uncomfortable.

The caller said criminology professor Richard Zevitz patted down students as part of a demonstration, and then, when talking about the concealed carry law in Wisconsin, said if an active shooter came into the classroom, he would shoot the shooter and possibly a few students he did not like. Some students reportedly felt uncomfortable enough to report it to the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.

There was one clear error in what the caller reported. Zevitz did not pat down students. He had student volunteers pat down other students (males patting down males and females females). Quite obviously, in a Criminal Justice class, the proper procedures for a pat down are a legitimate subject. Further, that didn’t happen this semester.

More serious, potentially, was the talk about shooting people. If any student actually had cause to believe the instructor might shoot them, that would be a real cause for alarm.

But nobody could reasonably think that Zevitz might do that.

Bureaucrats often overreact to anything that even vaguely suggests firearms violence. Remember the case of the grade school kid who chewed a pop tart into the shape of a pistol and was expelled.

In this case, Zevitz’ last two classes were cancelled. He was put on paid administrative leave for the Spring semester, and he was banned from campus.  He was told he could not even visit his library carrel.

Most students, doubtless, put this in proper perspective.  According to the Tribune:

Keisha Harper, a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences, said although Zevitz might seem strange at first, he just has a dark sense of humor.

“I remember coming in freshmen year and thinking that this man is a little bit out there, kinda crazy, but then again, I was a freshman at Marquette, and I didn’t really understand the criminology department,” Harper said. “I came to the realization that (Zevitz) isn’t crazy, he just kind of has a sick sense of humor.”

Harper added that through working with police officers and those in the criminology field, she realized that a darker sense of humor is needed to be in that line of work.

Another issue here is the suspicion that the judgment of the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences might not be completely unbiased in dealing with this case.  Zevitz has been in conflict with some of the more politically correct members of the Department, and at least some of his “colleagues” might look favorably on tossing him out – or at least inducing him to leave.

Zevitz is certainly a leftist, but having been in law enforcement for several years, he simply doesn’t have the prissy sense of political correctness of many of his colleagues.

Indeed, one suspects that what they really didn’t like was his claim that he would be willing to shoot a maniac on a murderous rampage.  But in reality, since Marquette doesn’t allow guns on campus (except in the hands of Public Safety), his odds of being able to do that would be slim.

What combination of political bias, interpersonal conflict and bureaucratic timidity caused this fiasco is not entirely clear. But that this was an overreaction is entirely clear.

Indoctrination at Marquette: Professor Louise Cainkar

From an e-mail that a Marquette student sent to talk show host Vicki McKenna:

I am a Junior at Marquette University . . . To receive my minor, I have to take a sociology course so I choose to take the Arab and Muslim Americans class.
At first I had high hopes for the class but it steadily became worse. During her time teaching she has provided us with reading material that calls for abolishing the state of Israel, has openly criticized our governor, and repeatedly given us material that criticizes Republicans, “state tea party movements,” and “the right.” Here is an example of an article that she is making us read. It is from the Democratic Center for American Progress and she wanted us to read pages 1-12. Obviously this is not the only article like this she has made us read and I can provide you with more if you would like. When you read it, I would like you note how it refers to “state tea party movements,” “The religious right,” and “Fox News.”

In another e-mail to McKenna, the student provided more details:

Her name is Louise Cainkar, I’ll attach the link to her Marquette page for you. I thought you might be interest. The professor is very frustrating. Two Wednesdays ago we went on a field trip and the guide was explaining how great it was that the state is proving school vouchers because now the school that we were in would be able accept more students. Prof. Cainkar interrupted her and argued trying to get the guide to agree with her that Scott Walker and the Republicans were awful, it was completely unnecessary and unrelated to the your guide’s point. Frankly, it’s shameful what she is able to say and call “teaching.”

It would be too much to expect that any professor should be so good at concealing their political biases that students could not figure out whether the professor leans left or right.

A lot of our students, for example, figure out that we lean to the right, although some others feel the need to ask. In general, when we lecture on something that makes the left look bad, we discuss an analogous case that makes the right look bad. Yesterday, when we talked about arrogant bureaucrats who overstep their authority, we picked on OSHA and the EEOC, and then discussed J. Edgar Hoover’s campaign to discredit Martin Luther King. When we discuss media bias, we tell students that there is no unbiased media, and that they should look at outlets on both sides of the ideological spectrum.

 Further, there is a difference between letting some ideological bias show and creating a hostile learning environment for students who disagree with the professor. The latter is an abuse.

 A related issue is whether the professor feels free to offer all sorts of political opinions unrelated to the subject matter. The classic canons of academic freedom protect the right of a professor to say what he or she wants in the classroom only when discussing the course material, and expressing scholarly opinions. Stray irrelevant political observations are not protected.

Of course, this distinction is largely unenforceable, but it’s still the case that spewing stray political opinions is an abuse. It’s difficult to see how attacking the tea party and Gov. Walker is relevant in a course in Arab-American politics.

But this is the Sociology Department (technically, Social and Cultural Sciences), and it, along with humanities departments is a center of political correctness at Marquette.

Vagina Monologues Will Be On Campus

[Updated with new information and moved to the top]

We blogged, a few weeks ago, about plans by the feminist campus student group Empowerment to perform “The Vagina Monologues” on campus.

The play, quite simply, flatly contradicts Catholic teaching on sexuality, and Student Affairs’ longstanding policy holds that no events by a student group contrary to Church teaching will be approved.

However, Student Affairs has no control over academic departments in the University, and Chris Miller, Vice President for Student Affairs, informed the representatives of Empowerment that sponsorship from an academic unit would be possible. When the play was performed on campus in 2007, the Honors Program sponsored it.

This time, it will be Social and Cultural Sciences. Roberta Coles, Chair of that department confirms that the play will be performed in the Weasler Auditorium on April 30, at 8:00 p.m.

According to Coles, there will be a talkback session with the cast and faculty after the performance. Apparently, no tickets will be required. According to Coles “it’s free and it’s a good-sized venue.”

Empowerment, by the way, was one of the selected organizations that met with lesbian academic/activist Ronnie Sanlo, when she was invited to Marquette to hold secret meetings with groups on campus considered sympathetic to the gay/lesbian agenda.

The play is morally questionable in an easy half-dozen ways, anti-male sexism being only one.

The play is ultimately insulting to women. The best analysis comes not from any conservative source, but from the liberal Slate website.

The first thing that will strike nonideologues is Ensler’s clumsy prose, which ranges between bad Rod McKuen (“It was a mouth. It was the morning.”) and the very worst of Henry Miller (“Then the quivering became a quake, an eruption, the layers dividing and subdividing”). While Ensler would call this a work of desacralizing, it’s ultimately a work of desexualizing. I take a backseat to no one in my enthusiasm for the vagina itself, but the Vagina According to Ensler is a combination between a bath toy and a household appliance. Its vision of female sexuality is at least as narrow and insulting as Henry Miller: A woman is a machine you work like a crank until you produce the desired quantity of fluid — from you and from her.

Does that mean it should not be performed on the campus of an ostensibly Catholic university?

Not necessarily. Performing the play and having a critical discussion of it would be dandy. Unfortunately, the last time it was performed, only left-leaning feminists were on the panel that discussed it. It only got criticized by English professor Heather Hathaway for not being sufficiently politically correct in several ways. (In fairness, she did criticize it for being badly written and incoherent.)

So, in the “talkback,” will any genuinely critical comments, from a Catholic or other Christian perspective, be offered?

Or is it going to be another attempt to indoctrinate students into a warped feminist view of sexual liberation?

We will continue to report on this.