Rick Esenberg: Facts and Implications of Our Legal Case

From a Federalist Society Teleforum, the head of our legal team (Rick Esenberg) discusses the facts of our academic freedom case against Marquette university, as well as the implications for the judicial protection of free expression on campus.

Journal-Sentinel on McAdams v. Marquette

Appearing today, a very good article in the local paper by columnist Christian Schneider titled “In the case of professor John McAdams, Marquette lost its way.”

Schneider gives some history:

In 1853, the Rev. Anthony Urbanek of the newly minted Catholic Diocese of Milwaukee reported back to Vienna on the state of Catholics in the fledgling city. Urbanek expressed optimism at how quickly Catholicism had taken root in Milwaukee, especially among its German and Irish settlers.

“What an encouraging sight it is to witness crowds of young and old on Sundays, coming from all sides out of the woods, as though they arose out of the ground,” Urbanek wrote, noting many churches weren’t large enough to hold all the people who wanted to attend services.

Not so with schools. If parents wanted to send their children to Catholic schools to “preserve their children from Yankee-ism,” he said, they would have to pay for the schools themselves. Trying to educate Catholic children in public schools, he said, “soon deteriorates into heathenism.”

And so, led by Archbishop John M. Henni and funded with a $16,000 gift from a rich Belgian, the diocese founded a small Jesuit college. The purpose of Marquette was to allow for academic freedom, distinct from the pressures of the secular world.

Schneider then outlines the basics of Marquette’s attempt to fire us, and concludes:

Marquette’s contract with faculty contains the promise that they will not be disciplined for “legitimate personal or academic freedoms of thought, doctrine, discourse, association, advocacy, or action.” It vows not to “restrain…rights guaranteed (faculty) by the United States Constitution.”

McAdams’ treatment vaporizes those promises; in this case, freedom of speech ended when an offended graduate student and sympathetic faculty advisers said it did. And the university capitulated to the very outside forces it was founded to resist.

Biased Reporting

Schneider’s column is in stark contrast to the slanted reporting the Journal-Sentinel usually provides, courtesy of Karen Herzog. In an absurdly biased story back on January 23, she pretty much acted as a mouthpiece for Marquette, suppressing information and giving a biased version of events.

The story, as it now exists online, is slightly sanitized relative to the one originally posted (but Google cache is the friend of people wanting to document embarrassing things posted and then changed).

In the original story, Herzog wrote “McAdams argued that he could say anything he wanted on his blog because of academic freedom protections.” This is nonsense, since we never claimed we could say anything we wanted. We never claimed the right to libel anybody, for example. Herzog changed that to “McAdams argued what he writes on his blog has academic freedom protections,” which is correct.

Much worse is Herzog’s description of what our original post was about. She said: “McAdams said he did it because he felt the graduate student was trying to impose her liberal views on students she taught.” In fact, we blogged about a graduate instructor (Cheryl Abbate) who told at student who wanted to argue against gay marriage (which had come up in class) that he could not do so, since he was not allowed to say “homophobic” things, and any such argument would “offend” any gay students in class.

Herzog apparently believed that an accurate account of what Abbate did would leave readers much less sympathetic to her, and would make it obvious that a serious issue of campus political correctness was involved.

Naming Wrongdoers

Herzog repeats Marquette’s claim that we should not have named Abbate. But Herzog knows perfectly well that the Journal-Sentinel (or any other news outlet) will name people accused of misconduct. This would apply to (say) an athletic coach accused of sexually molesting athletes or a county employee accused of embezzling funds. But Marquette wants to claim that a graduate instructor, who was 27 years old and had been in the military, and was the “instructor of record” in the course, should be exempt.

Herzog uncritically accepts Marquette’s claim that “the graduate student instructor reportedly started receiving threats as a result of the blog post.” Had Herzog simply bothered to read what was at the time the most current post on our blog, she would have known this was flatly untrue.

Herzog, without bothering to check, repeated Marquette President Michael Lovell’s claim that I had “expos[ed] her [Abbate’s] personal contact information as recently as last month.” I was puzzled reading this, until it was brought to my attention that a link to an Abbate page was included in a column by George Will in the Washington Post, which I republished on my blog. It seems Lovell’s real beef is with the Washington Post. Herzog could have checked this out.

Read Only One Side

Finally, at the very bottom of the story as it first appeared, was the notation “While in the national spotlight over the case, Marquette posted a list of frequently asked questions and answers about the case on its website.” This is linked to a Marquette “FAQ.”

An unbiased story would also refer readers to the website of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, to get the other side of the issue. But Herzog has chosen to be, essentially, a sock puppet for Marquette.

Again: Wall Street Journal on Marquette v. Warrior Blogger

The paper chimes in again:

Marquette and the First Amendment
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court will judge a promise of academic freedom.

A political-science professor who says Marquette University violated his employment contract’s guarantee of academic freedom will get his day in court. Though a judge for a lower state court earlier ruled for the university, last week the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to John McAdams’s request that it bypass the appeals courts and take up his suit directly.

Professor McAdams is now in his seventh semester outside the classroom because of a November 2014 post on his Marquette Warrior blog. The post criticized a graduate instructor, Cheryl Abbate, for telling a student with more traditional views that she would tolerate no dissent on same-sex marriage in her class on ethics.

After the post Ms. Abbate received several ugly emails. Mr. McAdams was blamed and punished, though he had nothing to do with those messages. The university contends that Mr. McAdams’s offense is having identified a student by name—Ms. Abbate. The characterization is telling, because though Ms. Abbate was indeed a grad student she was also a paid employee of the university teaching a course. If any student was harmed here, it was the Marquette undergraduate who was told there was no room for his views in Ms. Abbate’s classroom.

No one forced Marquette to enter into an employment contract with Mr. McAdams. But it did. And that contract says he cannot be fired for exercising a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. By any reasonable standard that would include the First Amendment—even at a Jesuit university.

The First Amendment is relevant here since, although Marquette is a private university, faculty have a contractual guarantee of the free speech rights embodied in the U.S. Constitution. This most certainly includes the First Amendment.

Since we did absolutely nothing that would not be protected speech under the First Amendment, Marquette is trying to weasel out of this promise by claiming that we violated some “expectations” that bind faculty. But those “expectations” are not written down anywhere, not supported by any precedent, and were in fact merely concocted because Marquette (under pressure from leftist faculty) wanted to get rid of us.

If Marquette can get away with that, faculty at public universities (who are protected under the First Amendment even without any explicit contractual language) are vulnerable to the same tactic.

Lovell’s Falsehood: Abbate Received Threats

Marquette President Michael Lovell, to support the narrative that graduate instructor Cheryl Abbate was terribly victimized has claimed that Abbate received threats. Recall that we reported that she told a student that he was not allowed to argue against gay marriage since that would be “homophobic” and “offensive.”

He claimed this in a letter to the Wall Street Journal:

Instead of expressing his concerns through established internal channels, he chose to blog about our graduate student—publicly shaming her, questioning her values and including a link to her contact information. Through those actions, he exposed her to a flood of violent threats and hateful messages.

He has done this multiple times, for example on an April 2016 FAQ posted on Marquette’s website:

Dr. McAdams disagreed with the way one of our graduate students led a classroom discussion. Instead of expressing those concerns through established internal channels, he chose to blog about our graduate student — publicly shaming her, questioning her values and including a link to her contact information. He sought opportunities to amplify his public shaming of her on cable news and talk radio. Through those actions, he exposed her to a constant stream of threats and hateful messages.

The “hateful messages” part is true. But “threats” is an entirely different matter. Threats are a matter for law enforcement.

Abbate Says No Threats

It’s odd that Marquette would make this claim, since Abbate herself says she received no threats.

She discusses her experience in a long essay on her blog. Amid the usual rhetoric about the evils of patriarchy and violence against women, she said this:

As you will note, none of the men who e‐mailed me or left a violent comment about me directly stated “I am going to blow your brains out,” “I am going to rape you”, or “I am going to physically assault you.” Yet, although these men were careful not to frame their messages in the form of a direct threat, their comments and emails should not be dismissed as just “harmless comments.” First of all, it is often the case that there are violent intentions that motivate these somewhat carefully constructed comments (they are careful in the sense that they do not express direct threats). To write‐off these abusive comments by saying “he didn’t say he is going to rape you; he just said he hopes you are raped!” is to wrongly trivialize the real threats of harm that very well might be contained within these comments.

Furthermore, even if these comments do not express actual threats of violence, these comments are harmful in the sense that they are intended to engender fear in women by reminding them of the very real and prevalent violence women experience.

Translation: since feminists are obsessed with violence against women, comments that are not threats can be viewed as threats.

Another interesting thing shown in Abbate’s essay is that she apparently spent considerable time looking around rather marginal websites (she mentions IOTW Report and Auto Admit) for comments about her. So many of the nasty comments she quotes did not come in e-mails to her, but were posted in some obscure corner of the web.

Conclusion

Why Marquette would keep repeating something that not only is false, but can easily be shown to be false, is a mystery. If it is mere carelessness on their part, it shows how little they care about facts in their jihad against this blogger. If it’s not that, they have simply chosen to lie.

Lovell’s Falsehood: Linked to Abbate’s Contact Information

Marquette President Michael Lovell has repeatedly claimed that we, in a November 9, 2104 blog post, linked to the “contact information” of one Cherly Abbate, the philosophy instructor who told an undergraduate that he was not allowed to voice opposition to gay marriage in her class since it would be “homophobic” and “offensive.”

He made this claim most recently in a letter to the Wall Street Journal, and in an “FAQ” posted on Marquette’s website in April of 2016.

This is important because Marquette wants to claim that we somehow encouraged or incited the unkind e-mails Abbate got when the story went national.

When our case was being argued before the District Court, Marquette’s lawyer (Ralph Weber) told the judge that we had “linked to Abbate’s contact information.” The judge, David A. Hansher, asked why we would do that. Weber responded “because he wanted to hurt her.”

Unfortunately, the claim that we linked to her contact information is flatly untrue.

Linking to Her Blog

We linked to Abbate’s blog twice, once in the original November 9, 2014 post, and again in a November 13, 2014 post.

Here is the link. As you can see, there is nothing there now.

But courtesy of archive.org, this is what it looked like in November 2014. Is there any contact information there? No, there is not.

But suppose, on that page, you go to Abbate’s toxic feminist essay “Yes All Men… Contribute to the Prevalence of Rape” at the bottom left of the page. You end up here.

Still no contact information.

But then you might click on “Cheryl E Abbate” at the bottom of the page, and you end up here. This is promising. At the top right-hand part of the page, it says “How to contact Cheryl.” When you click on that, and then go back to the December 2013 version of the page, you finally find her e-mail address.

Did Anybody Actually Do That?

So if somebody dug hard enough, they could have found her e-mail address on her blog. But suppose they just Googled up a list of Marquette Philosophy graduate students? There Abbate is, along with her e-mail.

If we want to be generous, we might say Marquette has been stretching the truth. If we want to be less generous, Marquette has been out and out lying.

Our Case v. Marquette Goes Direct to the Wisconsin Supreme Court

Wisconsin Supreme Court Agrees to Hear McAdams v. Marquette

WILL, McAdams had petitioned for the state Supreme Court to take case because of its effect on all colleges, universities in state

January 22, 2018 – Milwaukee, WI – The Wisconsin Supreme Court has agreed to bypass the Court of Appeals and immediately hear Professor John McAdams’ case against Marquette University. McAdams sued Marquette after the university fired him for blogging about a graduate student instructor who mistreated her undergraduate pupil. The court will likely hear oral argument in April or May and issue a ruling by July.

“We are pleased that the state Supreme Court has agreed to hear our case on behalf of John McAdams,” said Rick Esenberg, President and General Counsel at WILL. “It is very important to have clarification on this important issue and I’m glad that John will have his day in court sooner than later.”

WILL asked the court to take the case because there is no binding precedent on the question of how far academic freedom extends. A ruling from the court will also provide a standard for the rights of professors at UW System schools and private universities and colleges that also promise their faculty academic freedom.

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 significant amounts of bad press for Marquette.

In response, Marquette summarily suspended McAdams from his teaching duties and banned him from campus, initiating 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.

More information about the case is available here. ###

President Lovell Attacks Warrior Blogger, We Respond

When the Wall Street Journal came down on our side in our academic freedom case against Marquette, Marquette President Michael Lovell responded with a letter published in the Journal.

The paper then kindly gave us a chance to respond to Lovell. We are reprinting Lovell’s letter, and our response, as well as a few of the comments both letters provoked.

First Lovell:

Your editorial “A Jesuit School Gets Dogmatic” (Jan. 8) describes Associate Professor John McAdams’s interaction with one of our former graduate students as “normal give and take of debate.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. Mr. McAdams inflicted a public and personal internet attack on our student. Instead of expressing his concerns through established internal channels, he chose to blog about our graduate student—publicly shaming her, questioning her values and including a link to her contact information. Through those actions, he exposed her to a flood of violent threats and hateful messages.

In January 2016, Marquette’s faculty hearing committee unanimously concluded in a 123-page report that Mr. McAdams violated his core obligations as a tenured professor when he used his blog needlessly and recklessly to harm our student. In May 2017, a Milwaukee County judge issued a 33-page decision dismissing all claims against Marquette University. The judge’s decision states: “academic freedom does not mean that a faculty member can harass, threaten, intimidate, ridicule, or impose his or her views on students.”

John McAdams has the right to talk about controversial topics on his blog and to disagree with and debate Marquette-related positions freely. But he crossed the line when he launched a personal, demeaning internet attack on a Marquette student, choosing to publicly shame her to advance his narrative and draw attention to himself and his blog. Tenure and the freedoms that come with it also have obligations and responsibilities. These disturbing, harassing actions will never have a place on our campus. Just as they have no place in any work environment.

Michael R. Lovell

President, Marquette University

Now, our response:

Marquette University President Michael Lovell claims to be upset because in a blog post I exposed the misconduct of a graduate instructor who told one of her students that arguing for the Catholic position on gay marriage was forbidden, being “homophobic” and “offensive” (Letters, Jan. 12). The instructor in question (Cheryl Abbate) was 27 years old and had been in the U.S. military. She was the “instructor of record” in the class—to her students “the professor.”

Mr. Lovell claims I had “shamed” and “harassed” Ms. Abbate. But any journalist who exposes misconduct could be said to have “shamed” or “harassed” the subject of the reporting. Journalists (including faculty bloggers) expose misconduct. Exposing misconduct that politically correct folks dislike would never be labeled “shaming” or “harassment.” And I certainly questioned her “values” which are shamefully too prevalent on college campuses. That was why the incident mattered.

The claim that I linked to her “contact information” is flatly false. I linked to her toxic feminist blog post of Sept. 20, 2014 titled “Yes All Men . . . Contribute to the Prevalence of Rape.” Possibly people dug around on her blog and found her email address, or simply used Marquette’s standard formula.

Mr. Lovell claims I should have fought a quiet internal battle for redress. Of course bureaucrats want misconduct in their organizations handled quietly and internally. But journalists are under no obligation to accommodate them.

Mr. Lovell notes that a faculty panel recommended that I be suspended. But academic freedom for conservative faculty is pretty precarious in the hands of other faculty. Further, the faculty panel did not suggest I should render a Stalinist apology to get my job back. That was Mr. Lovell.

John McAdams

Milwaukee

And a few of the more interesting comments:

Responses to Lovell’s letter:

I have been involved and effective at raising millions of dollars for Marquette University. Recently I observed the law of unintended consequences working when a fellow dental alum rescinded his six-figure donation because of President Lovell’s action.

Paul A. Gruber, DDS

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“But he crossed the line when he launched a personal, demeaning internet attack on a Marquette student”

In other words, he told the truth about a 27 year old graduate student teaching a class. It may be inconvenient to the dual objectives of fundraising from alumni while adhering to campus leftist dogma, but it’s still the truth, n’est-ce pas? — Catherine Pate

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President Lovell states: The judge’s decision states: “academic freedom does not mean that a faculty member can harass, threaten, intimidate, ridicule, or impose his or her views on students.”

Isn’t that what his leftist graduate student was doing? — Matt Burkholder

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President Lovell claims that Professor McAdams “shamed” the graduate student. I read the blog and he factually reported what the graduate student did. No one disputes what took place. If what she did was not shameful, then nothing Professor McAdams said could be considered shaming. — Christopher Iliff

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Comments in response to our letter:

I have fond memories of growing up in Milwaukee in the days when Marquette was still an unabashedly Catholic university. Guess the same folks who brought us Liberation Theology are running the place. — St.Clair Tweedie

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McAdams was employed by Marquette. As such, he has an implicit responsibility to try to improve the University and at a minimum, not to damage it. He could have done so by going through the appropriate channels to have the situation addressed. He chose not to and his hiding behind his role as a journalist. He had a choice; carry out his responsibilities to his employer, or to pursue his freedom as a “journalist.” He chose to be a “journalist.” Given the potential and apparently intentional damage that he caused to Marquette, he was fired. — Stephen OBrien

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@STEPHEN OBRIEN It is quite possible he did evaluate how to improve the University and in his own personal determination felt that the best way to do that was to “out” the situation because the sunshine was needed so it didn’t get brushed under the rug. — Michelle Madsen

Marquette Attempt to Fire Warrior Blogger / Update

First, a briefing on the current state of the case from our lawyers at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

John McAdams was a conservative professor at Marquette University, teaching political science. When he blogged criticizing a liberal graduate instructor who refused to permit debate about gay marriage, claiming that any opinion against gay marriage was homophobic and would not be permitted in her class, Marquette administration threw the book at McAdams. He was suspended from his teaching duties and banned from campus as if he were a dangerous criminal – all in violation of his teaching contract, which requires various procedures be followed before a suspension may be imposed.

Marquette then moved to formally fire McAdams. The university convened a “faculty hearing committee” that failed to provide McAdams his contractual due process rights, such as unbiased members and the right to access all of the university’s evidence and witnesses. After a weeklong hearing, the committee issued a convoluted report that created new rules it could then claim McAdams violated. The committee recommended he be suspended without pay for one or two semesters.

Marquette President Michael Lovell went beyond that recommendation, however, not only suspending him but giving him a few days to issue a Soviet-style admission of wrongdoing or be fired. McAdams refused to engage in such coerced speech, and has been indefinitely suspended without pay – effectively terminated.

McAdams sued Marquette for breach of his employment contract. The trial court ruled in favor of Marquette, concluding that it had to defer to the faculty hearing committee, and adopted all of its findings of fact and conclusions of law, despite McAdams proving that Marquette had withheld key information from the committee. We appealed and asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to bypass the Court of Appeals, hearing the case immediately.

An organization on our side is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the nation’s most important defender of academic freedom, both for faculty and students. They published a recent article on the case, and noted:

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.

Finally, three radio interviews about the case. First, Tom Kamenick (one of our legal team) on the Jerry Bader show out of Green Bay.

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Second, our interview with Right Wisconsin.

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Finally, Rick Esenberg (head of our legal team) on the Jim Bohannan show (national).

Wall Street Journal on Marquette Attempt to Fire Warrior Blogger

A Jesuit School Gets Dogmatic
Is Marquette’s promise of academic freedom worth anything

By The Editorial Board

Marquette is a Jesuit university in Milwaukee. Which is appropriate, because jesuitical is the word that fits its explanation for firing a tenured political science professor who defended a student who was badly treated by an intolerant graduate instructor.

The sacked professor is John McAdams, who in 2014 wrote a blog post criticizing by name Cheryl Abbate, who taught a course on ethics. Ms. Abbate had told a student he could not express his disagreement with same-sex marriage in her ethics class because it was “homophobic” and on that issue there could be no debate.

In his post on the incident, Mr. McAdams made no judgment on same-sex marriage. But he noted that liberals are inclined to deem views they disagree with as offensive and then use that to shut down debate. The story went national.

Marquette officials took action—against Mr. McAdams. He was blamed for the hate mail that Ms. Abbate received after he named her, even though there’s no evidence he was part of any of it. Marquette President Michael Lovell gave him an ultimatum: apologize or be suspended without pay indefinitely. Mr. McAdams refused to apologize and has been effectively fired.

He’s also suing, and last May a Wisconsin trial court backed the university’s dismissal. But Mr. McAdams has appealed and wants to go straight to the state Supreme Court. The Wisconsin Institute for Liberty and Law, which has taken his case, says the firing violates Mr. McAdams’s contract with Marquette, which promises freedom from threats of dismissal over constitutional rights such as free speech.

As a private institution, Marquette has the right to set its own employment standards and it needn’t abide by the First Amendment. But it is hard to square Mr. McAdams’s dismissal with any reasonable understanding of Marquette’s contract guaranteeing him academic freedom.

We wish these issues weren’t left for courts. But when institutions such as Marquette are unable to handle what should be the normal give and take of debate, they invite that intervention. How much better we’d all be if Marquette would acknowledge its mistake and give the professor his job back.

George Will on Marquette Attempt to Fire Warrior Blogger

Academic freedom goes on trial

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court can soon right a flagrant wrong stemming from events set in motion in 2014 at Milwaukee’s Marquette University by Cheryl Abbate. Although just a graduate student, she already had a precocious aptitude for academic nastiness.

On Oct. 28, in an undergraduate course she was teaching on ethics, when the subject of same-sex marriage arose, there was no debate, because, a student said, Abbate insisted that there could be no defensible opposition to this. (Marquette is a Jesuit school.) After class, the student told her that he opposed same-sex marriage and her discouraging of debate about it. She replied (he recorded their interaction) that “there are some opinions that are not appropriate that are harmful. . . . Do you know whether anyone in the class is homosexual? . . . In this class homophobic comments . . . will not be tolerated.” The student’s appeals to Abbate’s superiors were unavailing (the chairman of her philosophy department referred to the student as an “insulin [sic] little twerp”), so he gave John C. McAdams his recording of Abbate rebuffing him.

McAdams, a tenured professor then in his 41st year at Marquette and a conservative who blogs about the school’s news, emailed Abbate seeking her version of the episode. Without responding to him, she immediately forwarded his email to some professors. She has called McAdams “the ringleader” of “extreme white [sic] wing, hateful people,” a “moron,” “a flaming bigot, sexist and homophobic idiot” and a “creepy homophobic person with bad argumentation skills.” This aspiring philosopher’s argumentation skills can be inferred from her reliance on epithets.

Before McAdams had written a syllable, she claimed for herself the coveted status of victim, branding as “harassment” his request for her side of the story. Striking a pose of bravery, she accused him of trying “to scare me into silence.” When, on Nov. 9, 2014, McAdams blogged, his post took no position on same-sex marriage but said this should be a debatable issue. The next day, Abbate drafted a letter asking that McAdams be disciplined. He was.

After this matter earned national media attention, she received some critical emails, some of them vile, and Marquette rightly branded them “hate mail.” However, for these, and for the unspecified “harm” they supposedly caused Abbate, McAdams was held to be somehow blameworthy. Marquette, however, offered no evidence that he had anything to do with the emails. After a committee drawn from the university’s monochrome culture recommended suspending McAdams without pay for two semesters, Marquette’s president insisted that McAdams also express in writing “deep regret” and confess that his blog post was “reckless and incompatible” with Marquette’s mission and values. McAdams refused and has been unemployed ever since.

Being a private institution, Marquette had a right to be as hostile as it obviously is to the First Amendment — except for this: Its contract with tenured faculty says no one shall be disciplined for exercising “legitimate personal or academic freedoms of thought, doctrine, discourse, association, advocacy, or action” and that the threat of dismissal shall not be used to “restrain” constitutional rights. A circuit court, ignoring Marquette’s ignoring of a Wisconsin contract, refused to adjudicate this dispute. Deferring to Marquette, the court essentially held that a professor’s academic freedom exists only until some other professors and university administrators say it does not. So, the deferential court allowed Marquette an unconstrained right to settle a contract dispute in which it was an interested party.

Because there is almost no Wisconsin case law concerning academic freedom that could have guided the circuit court, McAdams is asking the state supreme court to bypass the appeals court and perform its function as the state’s “law-developing court.” He is also asking the court to be cognizant of the cultural context: Nationwide, colleges and universities “are under pressure” — all of it from within the institutions — “to enact or implement speech codes or otherwise restrict speech in various ways.”

This episode, now in its fourth year, began because McAdams tried to assist a student who suffered unprofessional behavior by a bullying instructor. Abbate has moved on. Now at the University of Colorado, she is still a (perhaps career) graduate student, writing a doctoral dissertation on the importance of the rights of . . . animals.

The wreckage she left in her wake illustrates how rights are imperiled when judicial deference becomes dereliction of judicial duty. Prospective Marquette students, and Marquette alumni, must decide whether this school, awash with the current academic hysteria and corruption, merits their confidence and support. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court must lay down the law that can stop some of the rot this case illustrates.

CPAC Speech

CPAC was a hoot! We got to see only a couple of the panels, being involved in interviews most of the time, but we got the Jeane Jordan Kirkpatrick Award on Friday night. Here is our acceptance speech.

You’ll need to go forward to 41:15 to see Rick Graber read the citation, and 47:36 to see our speech.

Also, an article and interview with James Wigderson of Wisconsin Reporter.

Warrior Blogger Awarded for Being “Unintimidated”

On Wisconsin Watchdog, an article about an award we will be getting Friday night. Some selected quotes:

Embattled Marquette University Professor John McAdams will be receiving the inaugural “Unintimidated Award” at the annual RightWisconsin dinner Friday for standing up to the administration at Marquette University and refusing to apologize for criticizing another instructor’s shutting down of free speech.

“Well, it’s nice,” McAdams said in an interview. “I’d rather be back teaching at Marquette than getting an award, but it’s nice.”

. . .

“I’m actually there with important people,” McAdams said, “while I’m getting an award for offending Marquette administrators.”

. . .

“The secular people always said, Catholic institutions are very parochial. I think there is a kind of parochialism. But it’s parochialism in the service of a secular politically correct agenda, not a Catholic agenda,” McAdams said.

And he took issue with the university president’s conception of the university’s purpose.

“Michael Lovell said I have done something contrary to Marquette’s guiding principles. I think he really believes that,” McAdams said. “I think he believes the guiding value is everything is nice and cozy, and no one criticizes anyone. That is a tremendously parochial notion of what a university should be.”

We are looking forward to it. We even have the tux ordered.