Will the American Political Science Association Cave to Its Gay Lobby?

We wouldn’t belong to the American Political Science Association except for the fact that membership carries with it a big discount on the registration fee for the annual convention. But it does, so we belong and thus got this e-mail:

Dear Political Science Colleagues at Marquette University:

I write to request your support of a boycott of the American Political Science Association’s 2012 Annual Meeting, currently slated for New Orleans, Louisiana.

In 2004, 78 percent of Louisiana voters (including a majority in Orleans Parish) passed this amendment to their state constitution: “Marriage in the state of Louisiana shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman. No official or court of the state of Louisiana shall construe this constitution or any state law to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any member of a union other than the union of one man and one woman. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized.

No official or court of the state of Louisiana shall recognize any marriage contracted in any other jurisdiction which is not the union of one man and one woman.”

This language both limits marriage to different-sex couples and denies to same-sex pairs all “legal incidents” of marriage that arise from civil unions, domestic partnerships, and other familial arrangements. In other words, as a matter of state constitutional law, coupled lesbians and gay men can be nothing other than legal strangers to one another in Louisiana.

In 2005, the APSA’s Committee on the Status of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and the Transgendered in the Profession (on which I served from 2004 to 2007) adopted a resolution calling for the Association not to hold conventions in states with constitutional prohibitions of same-sex marriage. That year, the APSA Council forwarded the LGBT Status Committee’s siting resolution to the newly formed Annual Meeting Review Committee for consideration.

This year, the Annual Meeting Review Committee reported that any change in the Association’s conference-siting policy was a matter solely for the Council to determine.

On August 31st, the Council rejected the Status Committee’s resolution.

The APSA’s choice to hold annual meetings in states with constitutional provisions like that of Louisiana impedes the ability of LGBT political scientists to participate in the Association and to progress in the profession.

For instance, the domestic partners and children of LGBT members travel with them to conventions. Lee, my own partner of 12 years, has gone with me to meetings in Chicago and San Francisco. Were I to be hospitalized or otherwise incapacitated while visiting New Orleans in 2012, I would want Lee to make medical and other decisions on my behalf, and vice versa. However, under the Louisiana amendment, we couldn’t do that for each other.

This example isn’t hypothetical. Lee has Type 1 diabetes, and I’ve had to take him to hospital emergency rooms because of his disease. I wouldn’t want to face the question from medical staff in Louisiana, “Are you a member of his family?” In short, the Association’s rejection of the Status Committee’s siting policy makes only heterosexual families uniformly welcome at annual meetings.

The APSA’s posture hits LGBT graduate students and junior faculty with particular force. In 2012, they face the Hobson’s choice of, on the one hand, subjecting themselves and their families to an overtly hostile legal environment while in New Orleans or, on the other hand, not attending the conference and missing its opportunities to interview for jobs and to present papers in order to advance careers.

What is more, the Association established a relevant precedent in the 1970s and ‘80s when it refused to hold conventions in states that hadn’t ratified the federal Equal Rights Amendment. That policy precluded meetings in Chicago, because Illinois never approved the ERA.

Hence, while the APSA was fully prepared a generation ago to battle gender discrimination, the organization isn’t willing today to combat sexual-orientation discrimination with similar resolve. Instead, by selecting New Orleans for an annual meeting, the Association condones the condemnation of same-sex couples to the legal purgatory that Louisiana, and New Orleans itself, authorized in 2004.

In truth, the APSA would never consider New Orleans if the Louisiana Constitution discriminated on the basis of ethnicity, gender, race, or religion as blatantly as it does with regard to sexual orientation. Our national professional organization of political scientists, thus, reinforces the sad reality that explicit governmental discrimination against LGBT Americans remains politically and socially acceptable.

The Status Committee’s resolution eliminates just Atlanta and New Orleans from the cities with convention facilities that have been sufficient in the past to accommodate the Association’s annual gatherings. Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toronto, and Washington are, and will remain, viable venues for conferences. Surely this list is adequate to suit the organization’s siting needs.

I have faith that the American Political Science Association has the capacity -- and can summon the compassion -- to ensure that all of its members are treated with dignity and respect at annual meetings. I hope that you share my belief. If so, please be kind enough to forward this message with your own statement (e.g., “I support the New Orleans boycott”) to the Association’s President and Executive Director:

Dianne Pinderhughes, Dianne.M.Pinderhughes.1@nd.edu
Michael Brintnall, brintnall@apsanet.org

Please “cc” me at dpinello@jjay.cuny.edu

In addition, if you know members of the APSA Council, please ask them to reconsider their rejection of the Status Committee’s siting resolution. Current Council members include:

Lisa Baldez, lisa.baldez@dartmouth.edu
Susan Burgess, burgess@ohio.edu
Dennis Chong, dchong@northwestern.edu
Michael Doyle, md2221@columbia.edu
Kerry Haynie, klhaynie@duke.edu
Arthur Lupia, lupia@umich.edu
Anna Sampaio, anna.sampaio@cudenver.edu
Melissa Williams, mwilliam@chass.utoronto.ca

Lastly, please let me know if you’re willing to assist in organizing the boycott.

With your help, we can persuade the Association to relocate the 2012 conference while there’s still time to do so.

Gratefully,
Dan

P.S. This message is being sent to political scientists at more than 200 colleges and universities across the United States.

Daniel R. Pinello
Professor of Government
John Jay College of Criminal Justice of
The City University of New York
dpinello@jjay.cuny.edu
www.danpinello.com


Author of:
Gay Rights and American Law
(Cambridge University Press, 2003)
and
America’s Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage
(Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Of course, the profession of Political Science has a strong liberal bias, so why wouldn’t the APSA boycott a state that has done something so politically incorrect as limit marriage to opposite sex couples?

Part of a possible answer rests in the APSA Constitution, which says:

1. It shall be the purpose of this association to encourage the study of Political Science, including Political Theory, Political Institutions, Politics, Public Law, Public Administration, and International Relations.

2. The Association as such is nonpartisan. It will not support political parties or candidates. It will not commit its members on questions of public policy nor take positions not immediately concerned with its direct purpose as stated above.

Of course, this language didn’t prevent the APSA from boycotting the State of Illinois when that state failed to embrace the Equal Rights Amendment.

So if the Association blew off its Constitution once to placate the feminists, why not blow it off again to placate the gay lobby?

This, of course, will be a test case to see whether a bunch of liberal academics can act in even a minimally principled way. They didn’t when the issue was the ERA. And they are the kinds of people who think the U.S. Constitution can mean whatever you want it to mean.

But if the APSA placates its internal gay lobby on this issue they will be sending a clear message. It’s well known that political science is a discipline with little intellectual diversity, and what there is is between (say) liberals and leftist radicals, or between old-time democratic socialists and cultural leftists.

But the profession has always maintained that, in spite of this lack of diversity, political scientists can be fair in dealing with contentious public issues, and fair in dealing with students.

But why should anybody believe that if the APSA won’t abide by its own rules?

Will the American Political Science Association Cave to the Gay Lobby?

We broke the story right here, and Inside Higher Ed just recently noticed the situation, reporting:

The American Political Science Association is seeking members’ views on whether to relocate its 2012 annual meeting, currently scheduled to be in New Orleans, because of Louisiana’s ban on gay marriage. Several associations in recent years have relocated meetings due to labor issues at convention hotels, and others avoid certain cities based on their states’ policies. But such changes have been expensive for associations, which typically select meeting sites years in advance, and face fees when they change plans. New Orleans has been a popular site for many academic meetings, and some groups have moved meetings there, post-Katrina, as a gesture of support.

The APSA has twice e-mailed members, asking them to take part in a survey about the issue.

Here is the first of the e-mails, and here is the second.

So what would be wrong with the APSA supporting this gay cause?

Quite simply, it would violate the APSA Constitution, which says:

1. It shall be the purpose of this association to encourage the study of Political Science, including Political Theory, Political Institutions, Politics, Public Law, Public Administration, and International Relations.

2. The Association as such is nonpartisan. It will not support political parties or candidates. It will not commit its members on questions of public policy nor take positions not immediately concerned with its direct purpose as stated above.

But let’s be honest about this. College professors tend to be liberal and leftist yahoos, reflexively supporting any politically correct cause.

Indeed, as the Chronicle of Higher Education (May 30, 2008) pointed out:

This is not the first quarrel over the location of the political-science association’s meetings. During the 1970s, the association abandoned plans to meet in Chicago because the Illinois Legislature had not supported the Equal Rights Amendment.

That incident led to a breach-of-contract lawsuit by Hilton Hotels. In settling the lawsuit, the association agreed to meet only in Hilton properties for 10 consecutive years.

Political scientists, who generally think that the United States Constitution can mean whatever you want it to mean, apparently have no trouble with the notion that the Association’s Constitution can mean what they want it to mean.

The only hope for a New Orleans convention is another kind of political correctness: one based on race. Again, from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

And last month the association’s Committee on the Status of Blacks in the Profession released a statement arguing that “the black and poor communities of the City of New Orleans are still in the process of rebuilding their neighborhoods,” and that “the APSA annual meeting would contribute to the economic recovery of the city.” (The association’s recent conventions have drawn between 6,000 and 7,000 scholars.)

So will it be gay political correctness, or black political correctness?

Our guess is that the gay lobby wins.

And anybody who is paying attention will relearn a lesson they learned in the 70s with the Equal Rights Amendment: given a choice between respecting it’s own Constitution, and signing on to a trendy leftist cause, a group of political scientists will go with the trendy cause.

Political Correctness in Political Science: Gay & Lesbian Issues

In general, the poisonous effects of political correctness have not yet fully penetrated into political science.

Yes, the vast majority of political scientists are liberals or (much less frequently) leftist radicals.

But in general, the kinds of biases one sees in political science are the traditional liberal biases, and not the more current variety of political correctness.

Some evidence of this is found in the case of the Group of 88 at Duke. In the wake of rape accusations made against several Duke Lacrosse players, the Group issued a statement that assumed the guilt of the lacrosse players. Why did they assume that? Because the accused were white males, and the accuser was a black woman.

Several departments and programs at Duke signed on to the statement. Political science was not among them. Among individual faculty, 88 signed on to the statement, including only three members of the political science department.

But political correctness has made inroads into political science, as shown by a request we got today (via a mass e-mail) from the American Political Science Association Committee on the Status of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and the Transgendered (LGBT) in the Profession. It’s interesting that they have to translate “LGBT.” If political science were really entirely onboard with political correctness, that would not have been necessary. Here is the text of the e-mail:

The American Political Science Association is studying the relationship between sexual orientation and professional life. We urge all APSA members -- regardless of their sexual orientation -- to complete this questionnaire, which should take no longer than 10-12 minutes. Anonymity and confidentiality will be completely protected.

Here is the survey.

Most of it is relatively innocuous, although there is a fairly clear agenda on some issues. The survey shows a lot of concern with including “LGBT” issues into regular political science courses (they wouldn’t want students to be able to avoid indoctrination by failing to take certain classes). They are also very interested in whether faculty are encouraged to do “LGBT” research or discouraged from doing so.

And clearly, some of the people on the Committee are wanting to start a journal on Sexuality and Politics.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with studying the gay lobby as another interest group, or studying gay identification as a politically relevant identity, or looking at public policy issues that relate to homosexuality.

The problem is that academic projects like this tend to produce little politically correct ghettos, where only certain political attitudes are allowed, where all research and teaching must support a political agenda, and where broader intellectual standards are considered irrelevant, if not downright oppressive.

Looking at departments of Women and Politics, or Black Politics or Chicano Politics tells the story.

American Political Science Association: Fudging the Issue of a Pro-Gay Boycott

The American Political Science Association, according to its Constitution, is not supposed to take positions on controversial public issues.

Unfortunately, nothing so insubstantial as a Constitution can stand in the way of a bunch of politically correct liberal professors caving to a politically correct interest group.

But what if the issue pits racial political correctness against gay political correctness?

The gay lobby within the APSA wanted to boycott New Orleans because voters in Louisiana had the temerity to vote to restrict marriage to one man and one woman.

Yet the race lobby within the organization, represented by the Committee on the Status of Blacks in the Profession, favored a convention in New Orleans as a means of helping revitalize a city whose (heavily black) citizens were ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

So what is a politically correct bunch of professors supposed to do if caught between two lobbies toward which they instinctively genuflict?

The answer: fudge.

From an APSA press release:

Washington, DC—The Council of the American Political Science Association voted yesterday to revise its site selection policy for meetings but not to move the association’s Annual Meeting from New Orleans in 2012. The new policy is aimed at speaking out against state legal restrictions on same-sex unions, reflecting a preference for engaging with the state of Louisiana on these issues rather than to boycott New Orleans.

The vote by the Council was based on concerns that Article 4, paragraph 15 of the Louisiana state constitution, adopted in 2004, discriminates against the rights of same-sex couples and their families. For example, association members attending the APSA Annual Meeting may not be permitted to make medical decisions on behalf of their partner or family members.

So the convention remains in New Orleans, but the APSA is going to “engage” Louisiana on the issue.

Of course, the APSA has no right to “engage” anybody on any public issue, since its Constitution says “The Association as such is nonpartisan. It will not support political parties or candidates. It will not commit its members on questions of public policy.”

Sometimes, taking a middle position can be seen as a matter of principle, a compromise between legitimate concerns.

But in this case, it has nothing to do with principle. Rather, it’s a fudge.

It’s well known that college professors are not merely liberal or left, but that they are increasingly intolerant of views at odds with their own.

And the APSA’s actions send a message of intolerance. As Matthew J. Franck puts it:

No moral or religious reasons not to abandon the consensus of all of civilized history will be given a hearing by these [APSA] members, or even be admitted to exist as a good-faith matter in the minds of intelligent, decent colleagues. For the advocates of a “welcome environment,” the welcome will not be complete until everyone else agrees with them or shuts up.

Any student in a political science class will get this clear message, indeed, has probably already gotten it.

As Charlotte Allen has noted:

The best approach for the APSA might be to follow the counsel of Daniel Lowenstein, a specialist in electoral politics at UCLA’s law school: “The whole purpose of the organization is to provide a forum where politics and the political process are researched and debated, not to take sides on controversial political issues.” Are these academics prepared for such a radical idea?

The answer is simple: no, they aren’t.

Gay Activists (and Politically Correct Fellow Travellers) in American Political Science Association to Boycott New Orleans

We’ve blogged on the attempt of gay activists and some of their liberal colleagues to have the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association moved out of New Orleans.

Why? Because the voters in Louisiana had the temerity to vote to outlaw gay marriage. In other words, they took the position that voters in every other state in the union have.

A gay activist who has been pushing this issue just yesterday sent out the following e-mail:

Dear Political Science Colleagues at Marquette University:

In light of the APSA Council’s vote last month not to relocate the 2012 annual meeting away from New Orleans, I’m organizing a boycott of the conference and invite your formal endorsement of the effort.

A boycott statement -- crafted by several opponents of the New Orleans siting and setting forth the fundamental reasons for the embargo -- and a preliminary list of signatories are available at:

http://www.danpinello.com/Boycott.htm

More than 150 political scientists -- including a former APSA President, a former Vice President, former Council members, and a former APSR Editor -- have signed the document since it went online a week ago. So far, the most LGBT-friendly schools are:

Oberlin College -- 10 endorsers / 83% of the Oberlin department
Johns Hopkins University -- 8 / 40%
College of William & Mary -- 6 / 25%
University of Chicago -- 5 / 17%
University of California-Irvine -- 4 / 13%

Please let me know (at dpinello@jjay.cuny.edu or dan@danpinello.com) if you want to add your name to the endorsement roster. All APSA members, as well as non-members who have already attended an APSA annual meeting, are welcome to join. Note that the statement and its signatories will be distributed at the Association’s upcoming Boston conference.

The document’s language has been widely vetted. If you’re in general agreement with the goal of avoiding a New Orleans conference, I hope that you’ll be able to set aside any specific disagreements with wording.

Finally, if you support the boycott and plan to attend the Boston conference, I want to give you a three-inch “Boycott New Orleans” button to wear during the convention. Please let me know the best way to deliver the pin to you.

Many thanks,
Dan Pinello

So far, the online petition doesn’t seem to have gotten a lot of support. If only five political science departments in the entire country have more than 12% of faculty endorsing it, that’s hardly a groundswell.

Happily, none of our colleagues at Marquette has done so.

It’s early however, and only time will tell how many political scientists will sign up.

If anybody thinks that “it’s perfectly legitimate for people to express their opinion in favor of gay marriage,” they should keep in mind that any boycott of this kind violates an explicit provision of the APSA’s Constitution.

So the people who are signing on to the petition are not merely expressing their own opinion, they are demanding that the APSA blow off its own Constitution.

Thus being found among the signatories is a lot like being among the Group of 88 at Duke University who prejudged the guilt of the lacrosse players accused of rape.

But it is not quite that simple, since the New Orleans issue pits gay political correctness against racial political correctness. So the professors who don’t sign are not necessarily principled. They may simply be politically correct in a different way.

Why Was Provost Madeline Wake Fired?

One thing we have to admit right up front: we don’t actually know.

We do know perfectly well about a long list of mistakes and blunders Wake made, and about the view among faculty that she simply wasn’t “up to” the task of running the academic side of a major university. But what actually provoked Fr. Wild (with perhaps some prodding from trustees and donors) to actually let her go? We can’t be sure, but we know the sources of discontent were multiple and deep.

A Nursing Dean as Provost

Particularly among the Arts & Science faculty, it’s believed that Wake suffers from the lack of a background in the humanities, social sciences or natural sciences.

If this sounds like an irrational prejudice, the reality is that Wake has given a lot of evidence that she doesn’t “get it” where a liberal education (the sort that any Jesuit university aims to provide) is concerned.

Consider, for example, a comment she made at a March 7, 2003 meeting of the Core Curriculum Review Committee. In the words of the person writing the minutes:

Provost Wake stated that as faculty member of the core curriculum committee in 1993, she experienced tension between Liberal Arts and Professional Education. With Phil & Theo, baccalaureate graduates aren’t prepared to continue doing work in those areas, but in clinic lab science and business graduates have a profession upon graduating.

The honing of professional knowledge, skills and dispositions is mandatory.

These minutes were circulated by faculty members who noticed this passage, and took severe exception. You don’t dis philosophy and theology in a Jesuit university!

Other faculty point to the lack of people with mainstream academic credentials on Wake’s staff, and even her own somewhat suspect “Ph.D. with a major in urban education and a minor in nursing” from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Worse, Wake seems to be an enthusiastic supporter of something called “outcomes assessment.” The notion behind “outcomes assessment” is that a university has to be able to prove that its students learn something. The fact that they write papers and exams that get passing grades is not considered enough proof. After all, faculty already grade students, so there is no bureaucratic busy-work involved in that. So you have to invent a procedure that does keep some bureaucrats busy.

The policy has been vastly unpopular with the faculty, with our own Op-Ed in the Tribune in the fall of 2002, and our colleague Lowell Barrington’s essay in Academe being only the tip of the iceberg.

Supposedly, this policy has been forced on Marquette by the North Central Association, which could theoretically withhold accreditation if the University fails to jump through its hoops. (In reality, any institution of Marquette’s standing that faced down the bureaucrats would probably win.)

The problem is that Wake seemed to like and enthusiastically support the idea.

Perhaps this was a product of her nursing background. After all, you can in fact make a list of things that a well-trained RN should be able to do, and you can meaningfully test to see whether they can do those things.

In the liberal arts, quite obviously, it doesn’t work out nearly so neatly.

Worse than that, the initial attempt at assessment was blundered. Not only was it a bad idea to begin with, the North Central Association came in and said, in effect, “you’ve been doing it all wrong!”

Not “The Decider”

One chronic problem is Wake’s inability to make decisions. Issues seem to sit on her desk for weeks or months.

One example affects the Political Science department right now. We last year got approval to hire a faculty member specializing in national security. As one of our colleagues pointed out, America is at war right now, and we have a lot of ROTC students champing at the bit to take a political science course in the subject.

We interviewed job candidates last year, and failed to find one with whom we were sufficiently impressed. We decided not to hire anybody, but rather to come back and try again this year.

But we have yet to get approval to hire for that position this year. Like a lot of things, the issue sits on Wake’s desk. And it’s getting late. To recruit effectively, we need to get a notice of the job opening to the American Political Science Association (which will make it known to literally everybody in the country seeking a job in the field).

The perverse incentives this sort of behavior creates are obvious. Rather than holding out for somebody “really good,” departments would be well-advised to hire whoever is available. If you fail to hire you may lose the position.

Other Issues

A variety of other issues, some of them small considered in isolation, but which in the aggregate produced an image of fecklessness may have played a part. There was, for example, a mistake last year in the amount of financial aid offered to entering freshmen – a million dollars more than had been budgeted was offered. The incident resulted in Financial Aid Director Daniel Goyette leaving the university, but the general view is that Wake was at least somewhat at fault.

Wake cancelled the South Africa program, and then, in response to the uproar the decision created, ordered it reinstated.

And this happened after Marquette announced the success of a 300+ million dollar fundraising effort. What, after all, is the purpose of raising all that money if it doesn’t allow you to maintain popular and worthwhile programs?

Wake (and her staff) have a history of sending out ill-advised e-mails to faculty. One, in 2004, advised faculty to schedule a quiz or assignment on St. Patrick’s day to discourage student drinking. Further, faculty were told to promote the cause by “Not making jokes about drinking on St. Patrick’s Day.”

In January 2003, a memo went out signed by both Wake and Senior Vice President Greg Kliebhan telling faculty not to give any information about “a myriad of topics, e.g., your job, your co-workers, financial or other data, University policy” without checking with University administrators.

The policy had to be “clarified” within 24 hours of being issued.

Wake and the “Business Side” of the University

Most of this probably has only a tangential connection with Wake’s firing, although the cumulative effect of a constant series of blunders and a continual image of ineptness could have been important.

But the key factor in Wake’s firing may have been the discontent of people on the “business side” of the University, and particularly Greg Kliebhan, the fellow who heads that part of the Marquette bureaucracy.

Now, a key point: it is the job of the Provost to do battle with people on the business side of the University administration. Since the culture of the institution was changed by late and unlamented President Albert J. DiUlio, the business side of the University has been highly bureaucratic, rigid and quite frequently arrogant toward the “academic side.”

But if it is the Provost’s job to do battle with the business side bureaucrats, it is also the Provost’s job to win those battles. Wake never fought those battles particularly well, but it appears she has lost out anyway.

Coming to a Climax

As recently as a few weeks ago, Marquette President Fr. Robert Wild appeared to firmly support Wake. But discontent bubbled up, reaching top university officials, donors and trustees. Apparently, Wild finally decided he had to move.

The fact that the University is embarking on a new major fundraising effort may have contributed. Wake simply did not seem effective as the public face of Marquette – as somebody who could sell a vision to people who might write very large checks.

So the ax fell.

A Final Irony

What is so unfortunate about all this is that Madeline Wake is a very nice person, and she cares about Marquette. She has served the University for 30 years. In the long historical perspective, her 25 years in the Nursing School count for a lot more than her five unfortunate years as Provost.

We blame Wild, who promoted her to Provost, more than we blame Wake.

And we wish her well.

Diversity Follies at Marquette

Early last week, Provost Madeline Wake released her official policy on “diversity.” It begins by lamenting that Marquette has a “current 10.6 percent diversity” which is “out of step with local and national demographics.”

The missive, right up front, admits that the spirit of quotas pervades this effort. The explicit assumption is that if X percent of the population is black, Marquette’s faculty should be X% black.

It also claims “our students miss out on the richness of a more diverse faculty. We will not increase faculty diversity if our hiring pools remain most white Americans [sic].”

It then continues:

Effective October 1, 2005, new full-time faculty hires will not be approved unless there is a diverse candidate in the pool. “Diversity candidates” is defined as different from White Americans and includes those from under-represented groups, such as, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans as well as foreign born individuals, such as those from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia.

In short, no department at Marquette will be allowed to hire anybody unless there is “a diverse candidate in the pool.”

In an e-mail to us, Wake explained that the groups listed are just examples, and that (say) Asian Americans, and people from Western Europe and Latin America also count.

In an explicit admission that it won’t always be possible to have a “diverse candidate in the pool,” the memo adds:

In view of the difficulties of recruiting for some disciplines and the prohibition of requiring a candidate to disclose race or nationality, there is a process for rare exceptions. Dr. Keenan Grenell, Associate Provost for Diversity, will assist in seeking diverse candidates for any pool. If the search coordinator requests an exception to the directive, the request must be accompanied by letters from the dean and from Dr. Grenell attesting to the effort to develop a diverse pool and recommending the exception.

How will this play out in practice?

The “increase the pool” mandate is highly questionable. At least in Political Science, virtually all entry level jobs (and literally all at institutions of any standing) are advertised through a service run by the American Political Science Association. Anybody who is looking for a job will be watching those listings.

Of course, this varies by discipline. Peter Jones, Chair of the Math Department notes:

. . . we are actually hiring in Math Ed this year. It will be difficult, as the pool is small. Last year, the median number of applicants for all such positions was 16, I believe. There is no central clearing house in math ed, so “widening the pool” is not at all a waste of time. Any help that Dr Grenell can give us to identify qualified candidates will be valuable, since the pool is so small.

Of course, the fact that the pool is so sparse suggests a very high probability that it might contain no “diversity candidate” at all. In a narrow subfield, with only a few qualified candidates in the entire nation, Grenell is likely to find the same thing the Math Department found: black, Hispanic or otherwise “diverse” candidates are rare.

Trying to “Increase the Pool”

For one hire in the 1980s, the Political Science Department tried the “increase the pool” tactic, writing to predominantly black colleges that have Ph.D. programs in Political Science, and encouraging applications. Reading some of the candidates credentials, we felt sorry for the applicants. But we ended up making an offer to a black candidate who was getting a doctorate at the University of Michigan (one of the top programs in the country). He, however, accepted an offer from Washington University in St. Louis.

Which brings us to the most fundamental problem.

The inclusion of a “minority candidate” in the “pool” can, of course, often be achieved. In job searches that draw over a 100 applications (quite common, at least in Political Science) there will certainly be some “minority” candidates – especially when foreign nationals count.

But the question is: will there be one that is really competitive?

The reality of racial preferences (for which“diversity” is a euphemism) is that any blacks and Hispanics with decent credentials are very much in demand — and are in demand at schools that have more money and more prestige than Marquette. Thus, anybody who makes it to a “short list” or even to the interview stage is overwhelmingly likely to be overpriced and under qualified.

Consider, again, the field of political science. In the 2002 “placement class” (those looking for jobs in 2002) there were exactly 32 blacks (or 4% of the group). There were 729 whites (88% of the group). The rest were Hispanics, Asian Americans and American Indians. (Linda Lopez, “Placement Report: Political Science Ph.D.s and ABDs on the Job Market in 2001-2002,” PS, October 2003.)

Yet since blacks are about 12.3% of the population, Wake’s logic is that they ought to be 12.3% of all academics, and indeed 12.3% of all academics at Marquette.

Of course, Marquette might, via a Herculean effort, induce a large proportion of the available black Ph.D.s to come here, and actually fulfill the Wake quota. But this can only be done by luring those people away from other universities. In other words, we can become more diverse at the expense of making other schools less diverse.

Given this reality, might an overpriced and underqualified minority get hired anyway?

This is where the disingenuousness comes in. Marquette won’t admit that they want white Americans (especially white American males) discriminated against. After it was first issued, the Wake memo was modified to say that “We will continue to hire the most qualified candidate from the applicant pools. . .” Here is the first version that was sent out, and here is the second with the extra sentence.

But in fact they do want whites to be discriminated against. Wake’s constant carping about how we have “too few” minorities (based on some percentages) sends the unmistakable message: “hire a minority, and never mind if he or she isn’t as good as the white candidates.”

Of course, it’s not hard to increase the “diversity” numbers if you don’t care too much about quality. When Princeton hires a black faculty member who is about as well qualified as the average white Marquette hire, Marquette can hire a black faculty member who is about as well qualified as the average white hire at Lower Slobovian Junior College.

Of course, that person will have to live with the stigma that comes with being a “diversity” hire. We have found that even politically correct white liberal faculty view affirmative action hires with something little better than contempt. They will say the hire was “necessary” to promote “diversity” but they can’t seriously pretend that the person is a real professional peer. Minority faculty seem to sense this.

Of course, a black or Hispanic hire who is an affirmative action hustler richly deserves this stigma. But what if some very good minority candidate, perhaps for family reasons or because of Catholic beliefs, especially wants to be in Milwaukee and teach at Marquette? Suppose they really are as good as the average white hire and aren’t demanding special treatment. They will be very much the victim.

Is This Really About Diversity?

In spite of the pious rhetoric of the “diversity” crowd, this campaign really has nothing to do with real diversity. If it did, there would be an effort to hire more conservatives in most departments in most universities. In Marquette’s Political Science Department, for example, everybody who teaches International Relations or Comparative Politics is left of center – some moderately so, and some extremely so.

In places such as the English Department and the School of Education the ideology is uniformly left of center, in the latter case so much so as to be oppressive to conservative students.

Our sources tell us that there is one, and only one Republican in the Philosophy Department.

Given that slightly over half of Americans voted for George Bush in 2004, the most radically under represented group on college faculties is Republicans.

Of course, liberal academics will say that conservative Ph.Ds are hard to find. This is doubtless true, but qualified minority Ph.D.s are hard to find too. That is considered a problem to be overcome.

The truth is that the “diversity” crowd cares nothing about real intellectual diversity. They don’t see it as a problem if everybody in the Education School opposes school choice, or if the entire English faculty is feminist and analyzes every text they come across in terms of “patriarchy.”

At best, the “diversity” crowd simply wants to be politically correct and be able to say they have their quota of minority colleagues. At worst, they want to use “diversity” as an excuse to solidify the hold of the left in academic departments.

How Will it Work in Practice

This whole business could be relatively benign. In a search were there are 100+ candidates, and a typical “short list” (candidates who receive intense consideration) is eight candidates, why not just make the “short list” nine people, and add a “diversity” candidate — thereby fulfilling the requirement? Nobody has to take the “diversity” candidate very seriously beyond that point.

Of course, blacks and Hispanics are not only rare among people with Ph.D.s, they are unequally distributed across disciplines and across subfields within disciplines. And not all job searches get 100+ applicants. Thus in a lot of cases there might not be even one black or Hispanic. Marquette’s History department, for example faces this problem. According to Inside Higher Ed

For example, [History Chair James] Marten said that his department is currently conducting a search for a historian of Germany. That particularly field, he said, attracts “very, very few” minority scholars. “I’m very supportive of the policy, but we need to be realistic,” he said.

One “wild card” in all this is the inclusion of foreign academics. This might actually have something to do with real diversity. The truth is that the average black Ph.D. who grew up in the United States isn’t really very diverse. He or she likely will have virtually the same political views as white liberal and leftist professors, but will prate about being a victim of oppression and perhaps intimidate recalcitrant students more effectively than white leftists can. Foreign candidates, especially if they are from places like East Europe, are probably more likely to be conservative, pro-American and Christian than the average American Ph.D.

Another “wild card” is the issue of gender. Wake explained to the Academic Senate that, in departments in which women are “under represented,” a woman may qualify as the “diversity” candidate. As Wake put it in an e-mail to us: “I did say at Senate that gender will not be an automatic ‘diverse’ category, but that in departments in which there is a severe under-representation, a case may be made.”

The phrase “a case may be made” is a bit chilling, because it implies that for many, and probably most hires no department can just go about recruiting the best available candidates. Rather, there will be a constant hassle where the department has to placate Keenan Grenell with regard to the inclusion of a “diversity” candidate in the pool, negotiate with the Provost with regard to whether a woman qualifies as a “diverse” candidate, and just generally deal with a big distraction when they should be trying to hire the best person available.

How will departments react? According to Inside Higher Ed, Martin described what Marquette’s History Department did:

In another search, he said, the department was able to tweak the job description in a way that may attract more minority candidates. The job is for teaching U.S. foreign policy, which is another field in which there are relatively few minority candidates. Marten said that the department added immigration and ethnicity as areas on which the faculty member might teach (and he noted that “doubling up” on areas of teaching expertise is common).

In an e-mail to us, Martin explained that the word “tweak” was the reporter’s, not his. And he defended the changed line definition.

We had always hoped to combine a position with someone who could do immigration and ethnicity (we actually had someone teaching immigration history years ago); I merely meant that we took the opportunity of an open position in 20th century US — a position that will demand that the candidate be able to teach foreign policy — to suggest a second — or equal — field in immigration and ethnicity. . . . And it’s a quite traditional field in US history.

I do think — and this is what my comments were aiming at — that combining the foreign policy field with immigration/ethnicty will offer a chance to attract African American, Latino, or Asian American scholars working in immigration issues as they relate to foreign policy.

Martin, in other words, is arguing that it was possible to redefine the line to attract more minorities without sacrificing intellectual integrity.

His argument seems reasonable enough, but one wonders how often this will happen, and how often it will involve departments not hiring people to teach the courses they need taught, but rather offering the courses they need to offer to attract “diverse” job candidates.

Conclusion

At best, Wake’s “diversity initiative” will simply require departments to jump through the right bureaucratic hoops before they end up hiring the best candidate. Or, with the more liberal departments, discriminating against while males in the way they have been doing since long before Wake became Provost.

At worst, though, it risks distorting the whole hiring process.

This particular initiative, like such things as “assessment” and “strategic planning” projects an image of an administration out of touch with the core mission and Catholic identity of Marquette, running after every fad and fashion that afflicts academia. Jesuit higher education did not become great that way, and it’s a lot less great in recent years, for just this kind of reason.

Leftist Intolerance in Academia

From Bloomberg News:

Consider this recent account of a graduate admissions committee meeting. An applicant to a linguistics Ph.D. program is a matriculating senior at a small historically black college unknown to some committee members. “Left-wing black nationalists,” one committee member said of the college, while another said, to much laughter, that the college was “the academic arm of Black Lives Matter.”

The committee then spent more time discussing details of the applicant’s GRE scores and background — high GRE scores, high-poverty urban school district — than it did with some other candidates. The chair of the committee said, “I would like to beat that college out of her,” and asked, to laughter from committee members, “You don’t think she’s a nutcase?”

Other committee members defended her, but didn’t challenge the assumptions about the historically black college or the people who attend it. One noted that the college had a good reputation in the humanities. And another said that her personal statement indicated intellectual independence from her college and good critical thinking. She was eventually passed on to the second round but rejected there, and given the comments of the earlier reviewers, it’s reasonable to think that in that second round, her background probably counted against her.

This is beyond outrageous. Giving a candidate a harder look because they grew up in a high poverty school district, and attended a historically black college? No, no one said “we don’t want blacks in this program”; they don’t have to. They just have to decide that traits common to black candidates, like growing up in a high-poverty neighborhood, or attending a historically black college, disqualify you from being “one of us.”

While characters in movies often make explicit speeches about how they hate black people, in reality they aren’t necessary. Racists build their racist consensus in coded language, perhaps sometimes language so coded the speaker doesn’t think about the true message.

That makes it that much harder to root this kind of pervasive bigotry out of our society. And why it’s so outrageous to hear this kind of racist talk on a graduate admissions committee in this day and age.

“But,” you are thinking, “I can’t imagine a bunch of liberal professors talking this way.” And you would be right. Read on.

Or it would be, if graduate admissions committees talked like that. I changed a few of the important details. In fact, the conversation I’m alluding to concerned a young woman who was home-schooled before attending a small Christian college, which the reviewers of her application dismissed as a place of “right-wing religious fundamentalists” that was “supported by the Koch brothers.”

What happened on that committee is bigotry, plain and simple. And it’s not just a problem for conservative Christians, and people seen as conservative Christians. It’s a problem for academia.

Needless to say, the woman did not get admitted. The author goes on:

In fact, few other professional spheres are as strongly skewed to the right as academia is to the left; when I looked into this a few years ago, the only professional group I could find with a similar rightward skew was Southern Baptist ministers, a comparison that neither group probably finds very flattering. Military officers are weakly conservative (two-thirds to one-third), but the enlisted are less so, and whether your business skews Democratic or Republican varies by industry and job description. Professors really do stand out as extremely politically concentrated on the left in a way that few other groups are, especially in areas like social psychology.

As Jonathan Haidt and the good folks at Heterodox Academy have argued, this makes it too easy for the group to adopt weak theories that flatter consensus beliefs without giving them the rigorous interrogation they’d get from a more balanced profession.

There’s another harm: The leftward skew disconnects academia from the society that it is supposed to serve. The bitter culture wars we’ve been living through, and the increasingly nasty partisanship, are the signs of a society whose factions no longer know how to talk to one another.

This reminds us of a conversation over lunch with one of our colleagues in the Marquette Political Science Department. He was fussing and fuming about the fact that the American Political Science Association convention was being held in New Orleans, in spite of a campaign by the political science gay lobby to have it moved. It seems the good citizens of Louisiana had voted against gay marriage.

It did not occur to him to ask whether the APSA should violate its own constitution, which forbids it to take positions on partisan political issues.

It also didn’t occur to him to ask why the gay lobby should pick on Louisiana, since many other states (including Wisconsin and California) had voted against gay marriage.

When we brought up the notion of political correctness, he responded that he didn’t know what “political correctness” meant.

But of course, fish don’t know what it means to be wet. That’s an apt metaphor for academics. They are so immersed in their insular culture that they don’t know that they have any particular culture.

Heresy! “Scientific” Orthodoxy Allowed to be Challenged in Louisiana

From National Review online:

To the chagrin of the science thought police, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal has signed into law an act to protect teachers who want to encourage critical thinking about hot-button science issues such as global warming, human cloning, and yes, evolution and the origin of life.

Opponents allege that the Louisiana Science Education Act is “anti-science.” In reality, the opposition’s efforts to silence anyone who disagrees with them is the true affront to scientific inquiry.

Students need to know about the current scientific consensus on a given issue, but they also need to be able to evaluate critically the evidence on which that consensus rests. They need to learn about competing interpretations of the evidence offered by scientists, as well as anomalies that aren’t well explained by existing theories.

Yet in many schools today, instruction about controversial scientific issues is closer to propaganda than education. Teaching about global warming is about as nuanced as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Discussions about human sexuality recycle the junk science of biologist Alfred Kinsey and other ideologically driven researchers. And lessons about evolution present a caricature of modern evolutionary theory that papers over problems and fails to distinguish between fact and speculation. In these areas, the “scientific” view is increasingly offered to students as a neat package of dogmatic assertions that just happens to parallel the political and cultural agenda of the Left.

Real science, however, is a lot more messy — and interesting — than a set of ideological talking points. Most conservatives recognize this truth already when it comes to global warming. They know that whatever consensus exists among scientists about global warming, legitimate questions remain about its future impact on the environment, its various causes, and the best policies to combat it. They realize that efforts to suppress conflicting evidence and dissenting interpretations related to global warming actually compromise the cause of good science education rather than promote it.

The effort to suppress dissenting views on global warming is a part of a broader campaign to demonize any questioning of the “consensus” view on a whole range of controversial scientific issues — from embryonic stem-cell research to Darwinian evolution — and to brand such interest in healthy debate as a “war on science.”

The Louisiana Science Education Act offers such teachers a modest measure of protection. Under the law, school districts may permit teachers to “use supplementary textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner.” The act is not a license for teachers to do anything they want. Instruction must be “objective,” inappropriate materials may be vetoed by the state board of education, and the law explicitly prohibits teaching religion in the name of science, stating that its provisions “shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine.”

The law was so carefully framed that even the head of the Louisiana ACLU has had to concede that it is constitutional as written.

Of course, this bill only allows balanced treatment of “hot button” scientific issues. It doesn’t require it, and it should -- with the unfortunate proviso that teachers who want to present one-sided indoctrination will do so, regardless of any state mandate.

(My students tell me that teaching of abstinence was required in their high-school sex education classes, but it was a “joke” since liberal teachers sneered at the idea that teens should abstain from sex.)

The author goes on:

Second, the idea that the current scientific consensus on any topic deserves slavish deference betrays stunning ignorance of the history of science. Time and again, scientists have shown themselves just as capable of being blinded by fanaticism, prejudice, and error as anyone else. Perhaps the most egregious example in American history was the eugenics movement, the ill-considered crusade to breed better human beings.

During the first decades of the 20th century, the nation’s leading biologists at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Stanford, as well by members of America’s leading scientific organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, the American Museum of Natural History, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science were all devoted eugenicists. By the time the crusade had run its course, some 60,000 Americans had been sterilized against their will in an effort to keep us from sinning against Darwin’s law of natural selection, which Princeton biologist Edwin Conklin dubbed “the great law of evolution and progress.”

Today, science is typically portrayed as self-correcting, but it took decades for most evolutionary biologists to disassociate themselves from the junk science of eugenics. For years, the most consistent critics of eugenics were traditionalist Roman Catholics, who were denounced by scientists for letting their religion stand in the way of scientific progress. The implication was that religious people had no right to speak out on public issues involving science.

Of course, the proponents of scientific orthodoxy turn suddenly open-minded about heterodox ideas that serve their interests, or come down on their side of the Culture Wars.

Economic science condemns the minimum wage as forcefully as biology affirms evolution. But nobody would think of questioning a teacher who presented arguments in favor of the minimum wage.

Conspiracy theories thrive among high school teachers. These range from the entirely unsupported notion that the Oil Companies are conspiring to fix prices, to bizarre conspiracy theories about 9/11, to the more popular (but disreputable in the history profession) theory that a conspiracy killed John Kennedy.

So liberals are perfectly tolerant of dissenting and heterodox opinions -- except where they run afoul of their anti-religious biases (being critical of evolution) or their interests (global warming).

Marquette Attack on Warrior Blog: AAUP Weighs In

1133 19th Street, NW, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20036

January 26, 2015
VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL AND USPS

Dr. Michael R. Lovell President
Marquette University
P.O. Box 1881
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201-1881

Dear President Lovell:

Dr. John McAdams, associate professor of political science at Marquette University, has sought the assistance of the American Association of University Professors as a result of having been informed, by letter of December 16, 2014, that the university was suspending him with pay “until further notice” from his teaching responsibilities "and all other faculty activities" and banning him from campus. The letter, from Dr. Richard C. Holz, dean of the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences, stated, without further elaboration, that the suspension was pending a review of his “conduct.”

Responding by letter of December 22, Professor McAdams’s attorney stated that the university had not followed its own regulations governing suspension of a faculty member-in particular, that the university must provide the faculty member with notice of cause for a suspension-and that Professor McAdams had done nothing to warrant this sanction.

Dean Holz replied by letter of January 2 with an explanation of the grounds for the suspension: “Your recent actions in publicizing on the internet the name of our now-former graduate student . . . require University review.” In a November 9 post in his blog, “Marquette Warrior,” Professor McAdams had criticized a graduate teaching assistant for telling one of her students in a private conversation, surreptitiously recorded by the student, that she would not tolerate expressions of opposition to gay marriage in her classroom. Dean Holz charged that, because of Professor McAdams’s “unilateral, dishonorable, and irresponsible decision to publicize” her name, the teaching assistant had “received a series of hate-filled and despicable emails” which caused her to fear for her safety and, eventually, to transfer to another university. “You have been asked, advised, and warned not to publicize students’ names in connection with your blog posts,” the dean wrote. “With this latest example of unprofessional and irresponsible conduct we have no confidence that you will live up to any additional assurances on your part that you will respect and protect our students. . . . Accordingly, we are continuing our review of your conduct and considering all appropriate responses.”

Professor McAdams’s attorney replied to Dean Holz’s letter in a January 21 letter addressed to university counsel. He defended the propriety of Professor McAdams’s conduct, asserted that it was protected by academic freedom, and called “preposterous” a recent statement by a university

January 26, 2015 Page 2

spokesperson that Professor McAdams’s suspension and banishment from campus was necessitated by concern for the “safety” of students. The attorney also noted that the terms “dishonorable” and “irresponsible” employed by the dean to characterize Professor McAdams’s conduct are both to be found among grounds for dismissal for cause in Section 306.03 of the Faculty Statutes.

We understand that, as of this writing, Professor McAdams’s suspension remains in effect and that the administration has given no indication of when it will end.

As you are doubtless aware, our Association’s interest in the case of Professor McAdams stems from its commitment to fundamental tenets of academic freedom, tenure, and due process articulated in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. That document was jointly formulated by the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges and Universities and has been endorsed by more than 240 scholarly groups and higher-education organizations. On suspension, see the complementary joint 1958 Statement on Procedural Standards in Faculty Dismissal Proceedings. Derivative procedural standards are set forth in the AAUP’s Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure. The three documents are enclosed for your convenience.

A faculty member’s suspension for a definite time from his or her primary responsibilities is on occasion imposed as a severe sanction, second only to dismissal, following a faculty hearing on stated cause. Under the 1958 Statement, amplified as follows in Regulation 5(a) of the Recommended Institutional Regulations, an administration also may suspend a faculty member pending a dismissal hearing, but

only if immediate harm to the faculty member or others is threatened by continuance. Before suspending a faculty member, pending an ultimate determination of the faculty member’s status through the institution’s hearing procedures, the administration will consult with the Faculty Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure [or whatever other title it may have] concerning the propriety, the length, and the other conditions of the suspension. A suspension that is intended to be final is a dismissal and will be treated as such.

Given the facts reported to us, it is difficult to see how members of the academic community would perceive Professor McAdams’s continuing to teach as constituting a “threat of immediate harm” to himself or others. Nor are we aware of the administration’s having consulted a duly constituted faculty body at Marquette University about the propriety of the suspension or its conditions.

The information in our possession concerning the case of Professor McAdams has come to us primarily from him, and we appreciate that you may have other information that would contribute to our understanding of what has occurred. We would therefore welcome your comments. Assuming the essential accuracy of the foregoing account, we would urge you to reach an arrangement with Professor McAdams which will return him to his teaching responsibilities rather than to allow his suspension to linger on indefinitely, an untenable situation that assumes the

January 26, 2015 Page 3

characteristics of a summary dismissal. The alternative, which we suspect neither you nor Professor McAdams would prefer, would be for the administration to attempt to demonstrate adequate cause for Professor McAdams’s dismissal, following procedures-such as those incorporated in Section 301.07 of the Faculty Statutes-that comport with AAUP-recommended standards.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Gregory F. Scholtz
Associate Secretary and Director
Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance Enclosures (via electronic mail)
Cc: Dr. Richard C. Holz, Dean, Klingler College of Arts and Sciences
Professor Timothy Melchert, Chair, Academic Senate
Professor John McAdams

A scan of the actual hard copy letter can be found here.

Pam’s House Blend: The Voice of Politically Correct Fascism

Sometimes intolerance comes in such a pure an unadulterated form that it has special interest -- more or less as a Weberian “ideal type” of political correctness.

Thus we have Pam’s House Blend.

The links post is an extended discussion of how views that Pam doesn’t like need to be shut up.

She starts off with the usual list of views that she thinks ought to be suppressed.

If you look on the Internet today, you can find lots of “White Power” racism and Anti-Semitic horror writing and preaching. Christianity backs up the hatred on these websites. Yet no mainstream church admits these jerks in their sanctuaries, prayers, dogma, General Sessions, writings, or websites. No city’s newspaper grants them stories or will accept their ads. They are “shut up” in the USA.

You can even find pro-slavery advocates on the Net, I bet. But they too would not be allowed lectern space on any university campus in the USA.

Of course, any church has the right to ignore or refute any ideas they don’t like. And newspapers get to decide for themselves what opinion pieces they want to print.

So far so good.

But Pam’s point is that certain views should be banned from universities. Further, she doesn’t bother to distinguish between private universities (which can ban ideas they want to ban) and public universities (which are bound by the First Amendment).

But she is just setting the stage for an idea she really hates: the view that homosexuals are not born with a fixed (hard wired) sexual orientation that cannot change.

The American Psychiatric Association and all scientific associations and reputable medical groups in the Western world agree . . . homosexuality is not a sickness, an illness, nor an abnormality. Homosexuality is completely normal.

Some religious leaders label homosexual acts as sinful to their god. Some religious leaders label homosexual orientation as intrinsically evil. So be it. Many religions agree that homosexuality is completely normal and a real blessing.

Science and religion don’t always agree. Surprise, surprise.

The conservative Christian author of a book disputing science “The Born Gay Hoax” sought an invitation from the Republican Club at Smith College. During his speech to the women students, lesbian entered the hall, beat pans, and chanted. The speaker could not continue. He left the hall. The lesbians effectively silenced him.

She goes on to make it clear she approves of that.

Just like we would stifle speech advocating slavery, anti-Semitism, or racism. When Andy Humm, the host of Gay USA on Free Speech TV, found himself on a TV Talk Show opposite a reparative therapy counselor, he refused to speak with the counselor. Instead he spent the entire time speaking with the host of the show. He wanted to know how the host dared invite such an irresponsible person as the reparative therapist to the TV show. Andy went on and on about how the therapist and others like him hurt so very many people ... but he never engaged the therapist ... he ignored him completely.

I think Andy’s tactic was brilliant. I have to admit, I think those bloggers who criticized the Smith women were wrong. The Smith lesbian were right on the money. We do NOT need to invite crazy people to our campuses, churches, or civic centers. The whole western world already knows that homosexuality is completely normal. The jury is back, the verdict is in, the case is over. Case closed. Debate over.

The wingnuts can argue among themselves. They can hold the debate right along side an explanation of the world being only 6,000 years old and the earth being flat. Have at it.

But not at respectable universities, in respectable newspapers, or in the town square. The case is over and the wingnuts lost. If the wingnuts try to speak there, I will be there hitting pans and chanting with the lesbians!! It seems to be the only thing the wingnuts understand.

This sort of thinking is all too common on the politically correct left, including Marquette. As we have discussed, about two years ago, the then president of the Gay/Straight Alliance at Marquette proclaimed that no speaker opposing gay marriage should be allowed on the Marquette campus, since any such speech would constitute “hate speech.”

And the notion that “science has spoken” is echoed by the advocates of anthropogenic global warming -- who are also intent on shutting up debate.

“Science” in modern society has a certain mystique, but the simple fact is that, when science approached political issues, it is typically contaminated by three factors.

• Ideology. Scientists, like other academics, lean to the left and instinctively favor “findings” that help the left. Where homosexuality is concerned, that means promoting the agenda of the gay lobby. Where global warming is concerned, it means loudly insisting on massive government intervention in the economy.
• Careerism. If there is money to be made, articles in prestigious journals to be published or promotions to be gained by pushing a particular point of view, plenty of them will do it.
• Groupthink. Like any other group, scientists tend to live in a rather isolated little world, and tend to believe and accept what “everybody says.”

Historically, the same sort of people who are now telling us about anthropogenic global warming were, 100 years ago, promoting eugenics. In the 70s they were promising a “New Ice Age.” In the early 70s there were promising the collapse of civilization due to the depletion of natural resources (check out the Club of Rome Report). A few years before that, there was The Population Bomb. Disaster, we were told, would come from a rapidly expanding number of people in the world.

The politically correct, of course, ignore science when it’s inconvenient. Economic science says the minimum wage is a bad idea. The lefties could care less.

Of course, if the mass of the evidence really was on one side of these issues, the people on the side of the evidence would welcome the opportunity to debate, since they they could routinely win the debate.

We, for example, love to debate liberals on the issue on the death penalty.

But the politically correct don’t want to debate issues. They want to shut up the other side.

Which tells us that, deep down, they actually have little confidence in the positions they so loudly proclaim.

1832 Blog: Wild Charges of Racism

We routinely expect student blogs to be a bit irresponsible. After all, they are student blogs.

But sometimes they go completely bonkers. Such was the case when the 1832 blog published an article titled “Racism Permeating from within [sic] Marquette College Republicans’ Ranks.”

Written by Brent Bray, it attacks student blogger Joseph Kastner for supposed “racism.”

And what is the evidence of Kastner’s “racism?” Two blog entries dealing with Moslems. Here is the first one, and here is the second.

The first one notes the political correctness of Hollywood in making a film in which four Arabs are suspects in a kidnaping aboard an airliner, but then it develops that “the Air Marshall and the flight attendants who were behind it.” Kastner’s point, which is more than amply demonstrated by the movie version of Tom Clancy’s “Sum of All Fears,” is that Hollywood doesn’t want to make Arabs villains.

Of course, not wanting to make Arabs especially villainous is perfectly reasonable. But Arabs are simply more likely to engage in certain kinds of illegal activity, and trying to avoid that is political correctness personified.

Movies set in the South during the heyday of the civil rights struggle have certainly been willing to portray Southern whites in a very negative way.

The second of Kastner’s links deals with a Maryland Muslim elementary school teacher who has been charged with aiding two terrorist groups. Kastner editorializes that:

Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing we have both the Muslim Student Association and the Arab Student Association on campus, now doesn’t it? I sure no one’s visa is expired.

We think that Kastner was out of bounds with this comment, although we have to note that some of the actions of Arab students on campus have projected an image of irresponsibility. They, for example, attacked Ambassador Dennis Ross, a visiting scholar in the Political Science Department this past spring.

They staged an Arab Heritage Celebration that was chock-full of hatred of Israel, and indeed of the United States as Israel’s ally.

Some Arab activists seem to want to have it both ways. They want to be free to engage in extreme and inflammatory rhetoric, and then become very indignant when people begin to think of them as extreme.

At any rate, what Bray presents Kastner as saying bears no resemblance of what Kastner actually said. Bray accuses Kastner of “seeking to place Arabs as terrorist race inferior to commonalities of justice of a presumable guilt before trial based solely on the color/religion of an individual. . . .”

And again: Bray accuses Kastner of “eagerness to post and endorse racial epitaphs [sic].” Brent, he’s talking about live Arabs, not dead ones.

And even further:

Kastner has again shown his true colors in his blog “PC-America Stikes [sic] Again with ‘Flightplan’” in suggesting first and foremost that “Arabs males are (inherently) sinister” and that their presumption (and in this case actuality) of innocence should automatically be discredited because they happen to be of Arab decent [sic] so they must be a [sic] terrorist.

Here, Bray has put in quotes something that Kastner never said. Kastner describes how the movie audiences are made to believe that “four sinaster [sic] Arabs” are at fault. He’s clearly describing the presentation of these four characters by the makers of the movie.

Bray just can’t restrain his rhetoric:

However, Kastner would have you believe that every Arab person wants to tear down the fiber of America - hmm why would this be? Fear and ignorance often are a dangerous combination. Add to that a web page of a naive person with black and white assumptions of small town Wisconsin, and you have a loaded gun blindly aimed at Arab-Americans.

Bray, who in some contexts bitterly complains about “stereotypes” doesn’t mind stereotyping people who live in small towns.

The introduction to Bray’s post says that he “has an extensive background with Marquette University Student Government and, in particular, diversity and multicultural issues.” Among the “multicultural” and “diversity” crowd, charges of racism are supposed to bring the accused person to his knees, begging and pleading that he’s not in fact a racist and will do anything to prove that.

But the “multicultural” and “diversity” crowd seems to have no idea of how badly this rhetoric plays outside the confines of their own little playground.

The average American, hearing charges of “racism” thinks “oh, my, yet another race hustler playing the race card.”

Campus Free Speech Advocate On Marquette’s Attack on Warrior Blog

Donald Downs, a Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is one of the most important academics (and perhaps the most important academic) defending freedom of speech and expression on the university campus. Thus it’s no surprise when he weighs in on Marquette’s attempt to punish The Marquette Warrior for a blog post.

Donald A. Downs
Department of Political Science
303 North Hall
University of Wisconsin
Madison, WI 53706

January 27, 2015

Dr. Michael R. Lovell
President, Marquette University
1250 West Wisconsin Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53233

Dear President Lovell:

I am writing to express my concern about how Marquette University has handled the case of Professor John McAdams. As of this writing, Professor McAdams remains suspended, which entails being barred from campus and prohibited from interacting with any students. These are substantial penalties that typically are reserved for the most severe cases.

My main concern in the case is very straightforward. As others around the country have publicly expressed, the due process aspects of the case have been very problematic from the start. In mid-December, when the University took its first actions in the case, Professor McAdams was not adequately informed of the charges against him, as the letter from his attorneys (made public) makes evident. Contrary to Marquette’s own rules, the letter addressed to Professor McAdams did not provide notice of what conduct had been violated, nor did it specify what procedures would be followed.

When the University finally made the offending conduct known, it stated the problem was Professor McAdams’ blog commentary criticizing an instructor’s comments to a student, in particular the teacher’s decision to not allow discussion regarding the pros and cons of gay marriage in class on the grounds that such discussion could constitute a form of homophobic harassment. A tape the student made of his post-class conversation with the teacher supports the interpretation of the teacher’s reasoning that Professor McAdams posted on his blog. But it was not until later that Dean Holz finally wrote a letter to Professor McAdams articulating this basis for the University’s action.

More importantly, the severe temporary sanction applied to Professor McAdams—being banned from campus and not allowed to teach—was issued even before an adequate review of the case was carried through. According to generally understood standards governing discipline in higher education (standards that are reflected in Marquette’s own rules), such “severe” sanctions are allowable, but only after the fundamental norms of due process have been conscientiously been adhered to. The Policy Statements and Reports of the American Association of University Professors constitute the most authoritative standards regarding what could be called “common law” for the profession of higher education. The following AAUP statement on suspensions captures the essence of my present concern in respect to due process in this case:

If the administration believes that the conduct of a faculty member, although not constituting adequate cause for dismissal, is sufficiently grave to justify imposition of a severe sanction, such as suspension from service for a stated period, the administration may institute a proceeding to impose such a severe sanction; the procedures outlined in regulation 5 will govern such a proceeding. (AAUP: Policy Documents & Reports, 1990 Edition, p. 27)

Based on my own observations and research germane to the practices of higher educational institutions, the sanction Marquette has imposed upon Professor McAdams is remarkable in this context. Suspension based on the facts in Professor McAdams’ case is exceptionally severe under the circumstances, especially given the lack of due process that appears to have accompanied the decision. The AAUP’s position is similar to this assessment:

an administration also may suspend a faculty member pending a dismissal hearing, but only if immediate harm to the faculty member or others is threatened by continuance. Before suspending a faculty member, pending an ultimate determination of the faculty member’s status through the institution’s hearing procedures, the administration will consult with the Faculty Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure [or whatever other title it may have] concerning the propriety, the length, and the other conditions of the suspension. A suspension that is intended to be final is a dismissal and will be treated as such. (AAUP, 1958 Statement on Procedural Standards in Faculty Dismissal Proceedings)

Some critics have disapproved of the manner in which the student surreptitiously recorded his conversation with the teacher. And, of course, genuine and strong disapproval is merited regarding the threatening emails some very misguided individuals have sent to the instructor in the wake of Professor McAdams’ disclosure of the conversation. I share such disapproval. But three facts should be noted in relation to these critiques. First, Professor McAdams had no hand in making this recording. Second, to my knowledge he has made no threats of any kind to the instructor or to anyone else. Third, the topic addressed in Professor McAdams’ blog commentary addresses an important issue in higher education today: the status of intellectual diversity and free thought on campus. Numerous supporters and practitioners of higher education have expressed serious misgivings about the way in which improperly expansive harassment policies can stifle free discussion of sensitive intellectual and moral topics. Professor McAdams’ critique in this case dealt with this important concern.

I sincerely hope that the suspension of Professor McAdams is in no way related to the fact that he has publicly criticized the way the University has dealt with harassment training and free thought on campus. Unfortunately, the severity of the punishment, in conjunction with the due process problems associated with the infliction of this sanction, raise questions in this regard.

With all due respect, I urge you and the University to take the concerns others and I have raised into genuine consideration.

Sincerely,

Donald A. Downs
Alexander Meiklejohn Professor of Political Science
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Our Anti-American President

From Peter Kirsanow on National Review’s “The Corner:”

President Obama’s statements regarding the proposed Ground Zero mosque are the latest in a series of indicators that we are at a very peculiar pass: We have a president who doesn’t get America. For the first time in history we have a president whose default setting is in opposition to the general sensibilities of the American people. His behavior too frequently suggests that he’s playing a cosmic joke on Americans’ essential decency, considered patriotism, and belief in American exceptionalism.

You don’t need to have been a lecturer in constitutional law like Obama to know that the mosque’s backers have a right to build at Ground Zero. Polls show that Americans overwhelmingly acknowledge that right. But unlike the president, when his fellow Americans think of the construction of a mosque on Ground Zero, their view doesn’t begin and end with the First Amendment and local zoning ordinances. Rather, their view is of images that the mainstream media has done their best to airbrush out of our collective consciousness: Americans leaping out of windows and plunging — seemingly interminably — to their deaths to avoid incineration; first responders pulling charred remains from the smoking rubble of the collapsed towers; New Yorkers searching frantically for evidence that loved ones escaped the horror. That Obama, as the leader of the nation, fails to recognize that the situation calls for more than a sophomoric analysis that could be rendered by any first-year law student is disquieting.

As Dorothy Rabinowitz has noted, Obama’s alienation from the citizenry is just beginning to be more broadly revealed, but has been on display since the 2008 campaign.The media either failed to report it or chastised anyone who dared notice. When some remarked about Obama’s refusal to do something as simple as wear a flag lapel pin, they were pronounced unsophisticated and jingoistic. Obama’s casual stance during the playing of the “Star Spangled Banner” was declared a triviality. When Reverend Wright was caught shouting ” G–damn America!” those who wondered whether Obama’s 20 years in Wright’s pews might suggest ideological concurrence were dismissed as alarmist. When some expressed concern that Obama might agree with his wife that America is a “downright mean country” and that perhaps he, too, for the first time in his adult life, was proud of his country, they were told to grow up.

Then Obama’s association with Bill Ayers emerged and the mainstream media closed ranks and refused, as long as they could, to even report it. And when Obama expressed unalloyed contempt for Midwesterners who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment,” a phalanx formed to assure the public of his pure intentions.

There were other instances throughout the campaign and first months in office suggesting that for Obama, multiculturalism trumps national unity and moral relativism supersedes cultural confidence. His serial apologies for America, embrace of America-hating Hugo Chávez, and supplication to foreign thugs are consistent with a “blame America first” mentality that may be unremarkable for a political science professor but is toxic for the leader of the greatest nation in history.

And that is the point.

The fundamental problem of Obama is simple: he thinks like a college professor. He is the same sort of elitist, and has the same sense that he and his friends ought to be free to rule the country.

But perhaps most emblematic of Obama’s self-identification was his proud declaration, before a vast crowd in Berlin, that he is a “citizen of the world.” Most Americans believe that that world would be a much darker place without the United States of America. And they would be pleased if their president could express that belief without being patronizing, self-referential, or defensive.

But to do so, it’s helpful to get America and Americans.

Obama, to put it simply, is part of a culture that is alien, and alienated from America and Americans.

Yardley Report: External Consultant Evaluates Marquette Ph.D. Programs

There has been a bit of a buzz among the Marquette faculty, in recent weeks, about something called The Yardley Report, an evaluation by an outside consulting firm of the University’s Ph.D. programs (and one proposed program in Political Science).

(We have had a copy for a few weeks, but have declined to publish or discuss it here, since there is an insuperable conflict of interest when a faculty member uses as blog fodder a document he got because of his faculty status. On the other hand, we will gladly publish anything of interest that somebody leaks to us.)

But Daniel Suhr, of GOP3.COM, noticed a brief mention of the Yardley Report in the Tribune, and obtained a copy, which he has now published.

The Report is scathing in its evaluation of Marquette Ph.D. programs. Some examples:

• In the end we must agree, in the context of the competitive landscape in which Marquette University operates, with the prevailing faculty view that it is untenable to hold each of these factors -- research, teaching, and societal impact -- as an equal imperative. To do so has created a significant confusion of identity and operation for the University and has resulted in a tendency to give short shrift to that factor that is most vital to doctoral programs -- research -- and to the doctoral programs themselves.
• . . . the research and doctoral missions of most departments in the University are fragmented and half-formed, and so long as this is the case, the University will not achieve national prominence.
• It is clear from our interviews with faculty that many programs are losing potential doctoral students to some of the country’s best Catholic universities.
• . . . the ratio of research grants to overall funding is excessively low for a research university, and adherence to this model prevents scientists from competing for funding, a scenario that is both financially unviable and scientifically harmful.
• As a result of these factors -- isolation from the field because of lack of grantsmanship, a disproportionate percentage of faculty who are research-inactive either by choice or because of conflicting priorities, the inability to integrate research into the ordinary work of faculty and the academic units, and structural impediments to the conduct of research -- Marquette is lagging behind in some of its chosen areas of research focus.
• There is no question that faculty teaching loads at Marquette are too heavy to facilitate greater research orientation.
• There are aspects of the “Marquette way,” however that are detrimental to the University’s research mission. Part of this is a rigid adherence to the traditions of the institution, which have not, after all, included serious attention to doctoral education and research. The more troublesome aspect is the tendency to be isolated within the institutional community, to be unaware of or resistant to ideas, practices and conventions that come from the outside. This kind of isolation can be fatal to a research profile.

We could go on -- and on and on.

But is this criticism justified?

Doubtless some of it is, and doubtless Marquette could change some of its policies to improve research.

But there is a fundamental problem with Yardley. The firm’s view, in spite of some polite nods to other parts of Marquette’s mission, is that Marquette should be a research factory.

External research funding is the be all and end all for Yardley.

Daniel Suhr has noted the “smoking gun” on this issue: footnote 30 of the Report. It says:

We have a particular concern about the strategic goal of the College of Arts and Sciences to increase the number of core classes taught by regular tenure-system faculty. . . . [T]here is no question that it would decimate the doctoral programs and keep research faculty productivity low. Ultimately, we think that expense will force the University to come to grips with the notion of fixed term instructors and adjunct professors. The American Association of University Professors released a report . . . that indicates that overall, nearly half of all faculty are off the tenure track, and in some disciplines, this figure is as high as 65%.

Marquette, in Yardley’s view, has been spoiling freshmen and sophomores by allowing them to be taught by faculty who are (in some cases) star scholars, faculty who publish in top scholarly journals, and faculty who get invited to national and international meetings.

And the Arts & Science College is hoping to spoil them even more!

Yardley, in other words, has a problem with “the vision thing.” It’s not that they don’t have a vision. It’s that it’s a vision of mediocrity.

It would be much easier for Marquette to become a mediocre teaching institution than for it to become a top research institution. If the administration tries to “mess with success,” we are likely to achieve the former but not the latter.

And academia is awash with institutions what, while they soak up big bucks in research funding, aren’t particularly prestigious. That’s because the research is routine, and the faculty aren’t particularly illustrious. You don’t become Harvard merely because you double the dollars you get from the National Science Foundation.

Daniel Suhr nails it in his post.

There are already universities out there that do research. The University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Minnesota Twin Cities are two such institutions. Certainly the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign or the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor are also such mega-research institutions. But Marquette students, who primarily draw from the Midwest, did not choose to go to those schools, even though they could have done so for significantly cheaper tuition, half or less. Marquette undergrad students chose to pay $10,000 or $20,000 more to come here.

They did so because they wanted an excellent, personalized education in a Catholic setting where they have options. For my own mind, Marquette offered all the resources and opportunities of a major national institution - exciting DI athletics, leading faculty, lots of academic and extracurricular programs - with the promise of individual attention and classes taught by professors, not TAs.

There is no doubt that a better and more prestigious Marquette can be built, and that Marquette will do better research -- and maybe bring in more external research money. But it will come about by building on strength.