Bullies at University of Missouri (Endorsed by Marquette President and Provost)

From Heatstreet:

Just days after protesters successfully toppled the University of Missouri’s president and chancellor last fall, a white student forwarded her professor a disturbing tweet. “#Mizzou black students need to stop protesting and start killing,” it said. “The white supremacy made it clear they ain’t hearing it.”

The ominous tweet had already received 16 retweets and 3 likes. The professor forwarded the message onto interim administration and the university’s police, adding that he was unsure whether the person who had sent the tweet was a student. But, he wrote, his student was scared to come to class.

To understand what was going on behind the scenes as the University of Missouri was rocked by protests during October and November of 2015, Heat Street and National Review requested access to email correspondence from key leaders at the school. The request yielded 7,400 pages of records.

News coverage at the time focused on black students’ claims of pervasive racism, pointing to several troublesome incidents as evidence of a bigoted culture on campus. But a look at the email correspondence of the university’s administrators and faculty members during the crisis reveals another side of the unrest: how protesters’ belligerence left many students, faculty and parents fearful of violence and concerned for their safety.

Here is some of what we found:

On Oct. 7, as the protests had started to pick up steam, a student wrote to the chancellor describing her encounter with a group of Black Lives Matter supporters.

“Everyone has freedom of speech and expression,” she wrote, “but this was a large group of people. I know I’m not alone in saying that I felt very unsafe and targeted when I encountered them,” describing “people screaming at me from the sidewalk.” She wrote that “all lives matter and discrimination should be fought against,” but she feared “that group brought more division, hostility and discrimination than that one man [yelling racial slurs] could have.”

On Nov. 9, the vice president for human resources, Betsy Rodriguez, wrote to Missouri’s president, Tim Wolfe, saying that she thought he needed to see some videos being circulated on Twitter under the hash tag #ConcernedStudent1950.
One video shows a protestor singling out people on campus, shouting, “If you’re uncomfortable, I did my job.” In the background, other protestors shout “power,” raising their fists.

“There are at least 2 [such Twitter videos] from Griffiths society today, and 2 from the dining halls (one of those – Plaza 900) included visiting high school students,” Rodriguez wrote. “The protestors are increasing in aggression and disruption. These are pretty scarey [sic].”

A conversation later that day between Rodriguez and Michael Kateman, the university’s director of internal communications, raised other “collective thoughts” on the protestors’ behavior.

“Even students not involved in the protests are getting agitated, fearful and concerned,” their notes say, pointing out an incident where outsiders drove two hours to join the protests on the University of Missouri’s campus. “The protestors are willing to interrupt non-related events to protest. …. Our concern is that the longer we wait to have mtg [to address the situation], the more we risk violence. The longer we wait, the greater the risk of violence.”

“Many of the students in [protest group #ConcernedStudent1950] are motivated by anger and don’t seem to have a plan of action even if their demands are met,” the student wrote. “Many of them don’t have a plan of contingency,” adding that “preparations need to be made in the case the student [hunger sriker] passes and Mizzou is threatened with rioting and senseless violence. While I have not gotten the sense that they would go after your residence, it could be a target despite your public efforts.”

President Wolfe and Chancellor Bowen Loftin caved to students’ demands and resigned on Nov. 9, effectively ending the crisis on campus. But the events of last fall have continued to haunt the school, which has seen its fundraising and enrollment plummet.

The email exchanges we reviewed also show impatience with frequent disruptions to academics at the school during the protests. Several parents and students wrote to complain about classes being repeatedly canceled in response to the demonstrations.

A day after Mizzou’s high-profile resignations, a university employee wrote to Wolfe describing her frustration after seeing the video where Melissa Click, a communications professor, called for “muscle” against a student reporter.

“My fear is that things are going to get out of hand and something very bad is going to happen,” she wrote. “My husband is a Sgt. For the University Police and he is having to be in the middle of this mess and having someone like Melissa Click do everything in her power to incite a riot will make things go from bad to worse. I normally take walks around the campus a couple of times a day but currently am afraid to do so because I am white. My daughter goes to school at Mizzou, has some night classes, and she is now afraid to walk around campus and go to class because she is white.”

That same day, a parent wrote to the heads of the university on behalf of her daughter, who she said was so frightened she was trying to transfer out of the university.

“My white female student is being mobbed on her way to class and shouted at while being pushed claiming she’s a racist solely because of the color of her skin. … In the last 2 days she’s had 3 cancelled classes so her teachers could participate in this nonsense. So we’re paying for our child’s teachers to protest instead of educate?” she wrote.

Administrators had repeatedly called for students to confront racism and engage in “an ongoing dialogue” about “moving the UM system forward.” On Nov. 10, one student wrote to the now-ousted chancellor expressing frustration about the results of such a conversation.

“I tried to foster peaceful, civilized discussion with a few peers,” the student wrote. “What I received was a combination of personal and racial attacks, with direct quotes such as ‘You can’t have an opinion on this because you are white,’ ‘You have no right to speak,’ and ‘Get the f*** out of the lounge.’ I will not fill out a bias report on this because it has been made perfectly clear to me by both faculty and students that my skin color apparently gives me immunity from racial harassment, and I can only be treated as the aggressor in these situations.”

On the intellectual level of the protests:

Still don't understand how #ConcernedStudent1950 feels? Maybe you need a closer look. Check it out. @mutv23 pic.twitter.com/GlPUqa0DlL

— Danny Konstantinovic (@Dannykons) November 6, 2015

✊🏿 RT @AnuragRC: The #ConcernedStudent1950 protest at @mucampusdining Plaza 900 earlier today. pic.twitter.com/2Y94lo1JVf

— A♭ (@AlexDonAudio) November 8, 2015

While the media were concentrating on the protestors, Missouri students unimpressed with the protests expressed their dissent on Yik Yak.

And who sided with the bullies at Missouri? A small group of Marquette students. And Marquette President Michael Lovell and Provost Daniel Myers.

Those that gathered were of various races and included faculty, staff, students and Milwaukee community members. University President Michael Lovell, Provost Daniel Myers and the mother of Dontre Hamilton, an unarmed black man who was killed by a white Milwaukee Police Officer, were also in attendance.

Lovell said he went to show support for the students and community. Myers added it was a proud moment to be a part of Marquette.

“It is well-timed since we are in the middle of Marquette’s campus climate study,” Myers said. “We are making big steps. These are awareness-raising moments.”

Awareness of what? How university administrators cower before leftist demonstrators, including those with little support among the general student body and even less among alumni?

Yes.

Marquette Tribune Taken to Task for Intolerance of Academic Freedom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The kind that are becoming much rarer in academia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Missouri Protests Based on Fake Incidents

From the Daily Wire:

Show us the evidence of systemic racism at Mizzou.

So far, it doesn’t exist.

According to press accounts, four specific incidents drove the ouster of the liberal president of University of Missouri, Tim Wolfe. Three of the four have no evidence to support them, and the remaining incident was rightly investigated by Wolfe’s administration.

Here are the crucial racial incidents that brought down the top official at a major publicly-funded university.

The First N-Word Incident. On September 12, student government president Payton Head alleged that a red pickup truck of young white people slowed and began screaming the n-word at him. Head posted the story on social media along with a litany of supposed slurs experienced by various groups of Americans (“Many of you are so privileged that you’ll never know what it feels like to be a hijab-wearing Muslim woman…You don’t have to think about being transgender and worrying about finding a restroom…”). He then told the press, “this story is not just something that happens here. It’s not a Mizzou issue. It’s a societal issue.” He added, “This happened to me, but it happens all the time, not only here, but everywhere.” According to the campus police, the incident happened near campus, not on it, and the Columbia Police Department did not receive a report on the incident from Head. In other words, other than Head’s social media post, there’s no evidence the incident occurred.

The Second N-Word Incident. On October 5, members of the Legion of Black Collegians were confronted by a drunk white man who called them the n-word. The group issued a public statement: “At about 12:45 AM, we noticed an obviously intoxicated white male staggering down Conley Ave. on the sidewalk…while still on the phone he says ‘These n*****s are getting aggressive with me.’” Members of the campus administration and the police received reports, and the young man in question is reportedly living off-campus and is under investigation. The administration responded with mandatory diversity training on October 8.

The Car Bump. On October 10, Concerned Student 1950 protesters blocked the homecoming parade, and attempted to confront Wolfe by surrounding his car. Graduated student Jonathan Butler said, “We disrupted the parade specifically in front of Tim Wolfe because we need him to get our message.” Butler then alleged that the car had hit one of the students (tape shows no such thing) and went on a hunger strike. Wolfe apologized for asking the police to remove the protesters.

The Feces Swastika. On October 24, officials supposedly found a swastika drawn in poop on the floor and wall in the bathroom. Resident Halls Association president Bill Donley said, “After this event, it has become clear to me that the inclusivity of our residence halls has been threatened.” But according to Sean Davis at The Federalist, “No evidence of the alleged incident…has ever been made publicly available.” Donley refused to respond to requests, and other RHA staffers said they hadn’t seen the poop swastika. There are no public photographs of the swastika. The University of Missouri has now been hit with a public records request by The Federalist.

So there you have it. Four racial incidents, three of them evidenceless, and one of them taken care of by the administration.

Obviously something was rotten at Mizzou, but it isn’t systemic racism by the administration.

Of course, none of this really matters. The entire point is to bully university administrations, and get more politically correct initiatives on campus (“diversity training,” more campus bureaucrats to pander to politically correct groups).

This is all made worse by affirmative action, which admits students who aren’t really qualified and thus struggle academically. Add to this professors and campus bureaucrats who pamper and pander to minorities, and encourage a sense of grievance, and you get a bunch of bullies who seek a sense of power in the hothouse that is campus politics.

[Update]

The Federalist has turned up evidence that the poop swastika actually existed. Of course, a swastika would seem to be more an expression of hatred of Jews, rather than blacks.

Further, a real swastika might have been yet another of the hoax hate crimes that have proliferated on college campuses.

[Further Update]

The Federalist has been all over this. It seems that the key suspect is a student who “has also been reported to have made anti-Semitic remarks to the members of a Jewish fraternity.” This suspect has not been (and probably will not be) charged, but this seems more an anti-Semitic than an anti-black incident.

Marquette’s New Rules: Enabling Repression on Speech, Sexual Accusations

This is an era in which college campuses are becoming more and more repressive. First, campus speech is coming under attack, with speech codes so broad that they could be used to silence perfectly legitimate expressions of opinion. Students who express opinions that aren’t politically correct face bullying and harassment, and have to retreat to the anonymity of Yik Yak to avoid repercussions.

Secondly, a moral panic has surrounded sexual violence on campus. Males accused of sexual assault are assumed to be guilty until proven innocent (and sometimes presumed to be guilty even after being proven innocent). Bogus rape claims at places like Columbia and the University of Virginia create a huge national furor. Males accused of sexual assault are deprived of basic due process protections.

Could we expect a supposed “Catholic university” to buck these trends? If the university is Marquette, most certainly not.

At Marquette

Marquette recently released a new “Title IX Sexual Harassment, Discrimination and Sexual Misconduct Policy.” Here is the policy, as captured from Marquette’s website on this past October 15th.

A comparison of the previous policy, captured by Archive.org on September 15th shows a number of changes.

Sexual Violence

The previous policy addresses “1. Non-Consensual Sexual Intercourse (or attempts to commit)” and “2. Non-Consensual Sexual Contact (or attempts to commit).” Then the issue is: How is “consent” defined.

The policy is as follows:

Consent is the equal approval, given freely, willingly and knowingly of each participant to desired sexual involvement. Consent is an affirmative, conscious decision – indicated clearly by words or actions – to engage in mutually accepted sexual contact. A person compelled to engage in sexual contact by force, threat of force, or coercion has not consented to contact. Lack of mutual consent is the crucial factor in any sexual assault. Consent CANNOT be given if a person’s ability to resist or consent is impaired because of a mental or physical condition or is there is incapacitation due to drugs or alcohol or if there is a significant age or perceived power differential. Providing alcohol or drugs to facilitate sexual activity is a violation of this policy. Use of alcohol or other drugs will never function to excuse behavior that violates this policy.

A person may not consent if s/he is:

• unconscious
• frightened
• physically or psychologically pressured or forced
• intimidated
• impaired because of a psychological condition
• intoxicated by use of drugs or alcohol

Most of this is just fine, although we note a couple of problems. The policy seems to embrace the questionable “affirmative consent” standard, but it makes clear that “actions” an be construed to imply consent.

If a girl goes up to a guy’s apartment, takes off her clothes and gets in bed with him, that pretty clearly means “consent” even if she never says “we can have sex.”

Of course, the traditional rule was different. Consent could be implicit. A guy was allowed to try to “steal a kiss.” He could kiss a girl without asking, but was expected to move slowly enough such that she could avoid it if she wanted to. Similar rules applied to other forms of sexual contact.

The “psychologically pressured” language is equally suspect. A lot of women have been “pressured” into having sex. A guy who would pressure a woman to have sex is not a gentleman, but if he uses no force or threat of force (and she is not incapacitated) , he’s not a rapist.

In the real world of sex and dating, pretty much the same rules apply today. A woman who lets a guy kiss her (or have sex with her) is not going to run to campus authorities and accuse him of assault — usually. But if the relationship turns sour, or she finds the experience unsatisfactory and convinces herself she really didn’t want to do it, the guy could be in trouble. Something like this appears to have happened to Mattress Girl at Columbia.

The New Code

What does the new code say?

In order for individuals to engage in sexual activity of any type with each other, there must be clear, knowing and voluntary consent prior to and during sexual activity. Consent is the voluntary, clear, actively given, positive agreement between the participants to engage in a specific sexual act or activity. Previous relationships or consent does not imply consent to future sexual activity. Consent can be withdrawn at any time once given, so long as that withdrawal is clearly communicated.

What is missing? The language that says that consent can be “indicated by actions.” Thus, a girl quite voluntarily getting into bed with a guy does not meet the standard for “consent.” This opens the door for the prosecution of any guy who had sex that was consensual, but not verbally agreed to.

Harassment

We have blogged on Marquette’s absurd and repressive “harassment training” which was imposed on all employees and staff in the fall of 2014.

The previous code defined harassment first in terms of quid pro quo harassment (“you’ll get something of you submit to my advances”) and then went on to add:

. . . conduct [that] is sufficiently severe and pervasive so as to alter the conditions of, or have the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with, an individual’s academic performance or work by creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive educational, residential, or working environment.

That’s not very precise, but on its face it seems reasonable.

The new code deals (likewise) with quid pro quo harassment, and adds things that might also reasonably be called “harassment” such as “Epithets, slurs, negative stereotyping, or threatening, intimidating, or hostile acts.” But then it goes into dangerous territory, adding:

Placing on walls, bulletin boards, email, social networking websites, or elsewhere on the University’s premises graphic material that shows hostility or aversion to an individual or group (as listed above) because of an individual’s race, color, national origin, religion, age, disability, sex, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, predisposing genetic characteristic, or military status or any other characteristics protected by this Policy and/or law, under any of the circumstances described in this section.

(“Listed above” are the same groups listed in this paragraph.)

This, obviously, includes a lot of things that would be protected by the First Amendment in a public university. But often such expressions involve legitimate discussion at any university.

Social Networking Sites

Extending the policy to social networking sites is a major expansion.  It’s one thing if somebody puts up an anti-Muslim or anti-gay poster in a workplace, where all employees are necessarily exposed to it.  But nobody has to visit Facebook or Twitter, and if they do, they get to pick whose posts they see.  This policy means that campus authoritarians can search around social networking sites looking for statements they find “offensive” and then use them to get students in trouble.  

Can one criticize Islam for its treatment of women? That shows an “aversion” to a “group” on the basis of religion. And indeed criticism of Islam (and Baltimore rioters) recently got a student at Texas Christian University suspended for his posts on Twitter and Facebook.

Suppose somebody says of black people:

Their entire culture just isn’t conducive to a life of success. It just isn’t. The outfits. The attitudes. The behavior.

This statement was on a list of posts on Yik Yak that a bunch of feminist and “civil rights” organizations believed should be punished.

 What about a statement like:

Call me a preppy white kid again and I’ll protest you black people for racial profiling.

This appeared on a list of Yik Yak posts in the wake of a demonstration by the Coalition of and for Students of Color at Marquette University blocking traffic on Wisconsin Avenue. The person who compiled the posts (Zoe Del Colle) called them “racist.” (Facebook login required to see the page.)

Thus the language Marquette has adopted could easily be used to punish students who make legitimate (but politically incorrect) comments on public issues. Sometimes groups defined by race, religion, or such can legitimately be criticized.

And one can’t imagine anybody on a college campus getting into trouble for saying that conservative Christians are “bigoted” or that whites are “blinded by their white privilege.”

When people start punishing speech, they never ever do it in a viewpoint neutral way. They only do it to shut up expression they don’t like.

Current Marquette Administration

The nature of Marquette’s current administration engenders no confidence that free expression will be respected on campus, since it is in full “pander” mode toward the student activists.

Marquette Wire, for example, reports on a demonstration on campus last Thursday in sympathy with University of Missouri demonstrators:

Those that gathered were of various races and included faculty, staff, students and Milwaukee community members. University President Michael Lovell, Provost Daniel Myers and the mother of Dontre Hamilton, an unarmed black man who was killed by a white Milwaukee Police Officer, were also in attendance.

Lovell said he went to show support for the students and community. Myers added it was a proud moment to be a part of Marquette.

In another recent meeting, administration officials seemed apologetic for painting over a mural of black militant terrorist and murderer Assata Shakur.

Provost Myers, faced with a demand that Marquette apologize for painting over the mural said:

I want to change things. I came here to change things. I am really committed to this.

Associate Provost for Diversity and Inclusion William Welburn likewise pandered. According to Marquette Wire:

“I believe very strongly that we are not going to have processes like this again, especially when it comes to issues of how this campus handles diversity and inclusion,” Welburn said. “Whatever we do moving forward, we have to think about women, women of color, African-American women specifically because of this incident. We have to think about the damage.”

Marquette’s administration seems no more willing to stand up to activist bullies than other university administrations.

It’s an open question how much of this is the result of politically correct attitudes on the part of administrators, and how much is due to a timid desire to defuse trouble coming from the activists.

Either way, Marquette is becoming a more and more oppressive place. Not only is any notion of “Catholic identity” junked when it contradicts political correctness, secular notions of free expression are pushed aside too.

Marquette Tribune: Coming Down Against Free Speech for Warrior Blogger

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

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

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

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

How did she “handle a disagreement?”

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

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

The Tribune goes on:

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

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

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

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

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

Threats?

The Tribune goes on:

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

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

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

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

Promoting Only One Sort of Speech

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Minorities and the Recipe for Failure

From the Americn Thinker an account of one Ed Kaitz, who had quite diverse experiences in Bayou country and in politically correct academia.

In Bayou country I lived on boats and in doublewide trailers, and like the rest of the Vietnamese refugees, I shopped at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of rice. When they arrived in Louisiana the refugees had no money (the money that they had was used to bribe their way out of Vietnam and into refugee camps in Thailand), few friends, and a mostly unfriendly and suspicious local population.

They did however have strong families, a strong work ethic, and the “Audacity of Hope.” Within a generation, with little or no knowledge of English, the Vietnamese had achieved dominance in the fishing industry there and their children were already achieving the top SAT scores in the state.

While I had been fishing my new black friend had been working as a prison psychologist in Missouri, and he was pursuing a higher degree in psychology. He was interested in my story, and after about an hour getting to know each other I asked him point blank why these Vietnamese refugees, with no money, friends, or knowledge of the language could be, within a generation, so successful. I also asked him why it was so difficult to convince young black men to abandon the streets and take advantage of the same kinds of opportunities that the Vietnamese had recently embraced.

His answer, only a few words, not only floored me but became sort of a razor that has allowed me ever since to slice through all of the rhetoric regarding race relations that Democrats shovel our way during election season:

“We’re owed and they aren’t.”

In short, he concluded, “they’re hungry and we think we’re owed. It’s crushing us, and as long as we think we’re owed we’re going nowhere.”

And then to another job:

After leaving the fishing boats, I attended graduate school at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I managed to get a job on campus teaching expository writing to minority students who had been accepted provisionally into the university on an affirmative action program. And although I never met him, Ward Churchill, in addition to teaching in the ethnic studies department, helped to develop and organize the minority writing program.

The job paid most of my bills, but what I witnessed there was absolutely horrifying. The students were encouraged to write essays attacking the white establishment from every conceivable angle and in addition to defend affirmative action and other government programs. Of the hundreds of papers that I read, there was not one original contribution to the problem of black mobility that strayed from the party line.

The irony of it all however is that the “white establishment” managed to get them into the college and pay their entire tuition. Instead of being encouraged to study international affairs, classical or modern languages, philosophy or art, most of these students became ethnic studies or sociology majors because it allowed them to remain in disciplines whose orientation justified their existence at the university. In short, it became a vicious cycle.

There was a student there I’ll never forget. He was plucked out of the projects in Denver and given a free ride to the university. One day in my office he told me that his mother had said the following to him: “M.J., they owe you this. White people at that university owe you this.” M.J.’s experience at the university was a glorious fulfillment of his mother’s angst.

There were black student organizations and other clubs that “facilitated” the minority student’s experience on the majority white and “racist” campus, in addition to a plethora of faculty members, both white and black, who encouraged the same animus toward the white establishment. While adding to their own bona fides as part of the trendy Left, these “facilitators” supplied M.J. with everything he needed to quench his and his mother’s anger, but nothing in the way of advice about how to succeed in college. No one, in short, had told M.J. that he needed to study. But since he was “owed” everything, why put out any effort on his own?

In a fit of despair after failing most of his classes, M.J. wandered into my office one Friday afternoon in the middle of the semester and asked if I could help him out. I asked M.J. about his plans that evening, and he told me that he usually attended parties on Friday and Saturday nights. I told him that if he agreed to meet me in front of the university library at 6:00pm I would buy him dinner. At 6pm M.J. showed up, and for the next twenty minutes we wandered silently through the stacks, lounges, and study areas of the library. When we arrived back at the entrance I asked M.J. if he noticed anything interesting. As we headed up the hill to a popular burger joint, M.J. turned to me and said:

“They were all Asian. Everyone in there was Asian, and it was Friday night.”

Nothing I could do, say, or show him, however, could match the fire power of his support system favoring anger. I was sad to hear of M.J. dropping out of school the following semester.

One might think that the moral of all of this is that the Asian model should be emulated.

But the politically correct professors don’t see it this way. They deride Asians as the “model minority.”

Michael Lovell’s Fiasco: The Cost

Marquette’s defeat in the Wisconsin Supreme Court for its attempt to fire us was epic. The Court trashed Marquette’s lame arguments, one of which was that it should defer to a Faculty Hearing Committee that said we had been guilty of misconduct and should be suspended without pay for one or two semesters.

The court noted that we had not agreed in our contract to accept the judgment of a bunch of other professors as to whether we could express our opinions on our blog. Further, Marquette President Michael Lovell went beyond the Faculty Hearing Committee in punishing us, demanding a Stalinist apology. Marquette, in other words, was arguing that Faculty Hearing Committee was binding when it was convenient for the university, but not binding when it was inconvenient.

“Guiding Values”

The university claimed it could invoke its “Guiding Values” to override our black letter guarantee of free expression. The Court trashed this notion:

The University posited that educational institutions assume academic freedom is just one value that must be balanced against “other values core to their mission.” Some of those values, it says, include the obligation to "take care not to cause harm, directly or indirectly, to members of the university community,” “to respect the dignity of others and to acknowledge their right to express differing opinions,” to “safeguard[] the conditions for the community to exist,” to “ensur[e] colleagues feel free to explore undeveloped ideas,” and to carry out “the concept of cura personalis,” which involves working and caring “for all aspects of the lives of the members of the institution.” These are worthy aspirations, and they reflect well on the University. But they contain insufficiently certain standards by which a professor’s compliance may be measured. Setting the doctrine of academic freedom adrift amongst these competing values would deprive the doctrine of its instructive power; it would provide faculty members with little to no guidance on what it covers.

The Court was doubtless unimpressed with Marquette’s pious rhetoric about “values” in light of the fact that our blog post highlighted an instructor who insulted a student, telling him that his opposition to gay marriage would sound homophobic, would be offensive, and could not be expressed in her class. When he complained to authorities he was blown off, and indeed insulted.

Even if the Court had been inclined to defer to Marquette’s real values, why should they defer to hypocritical rhetoric about values?

Michael Lovell

Marquette President Michael Lovell has, quite simply, been responsible for a huge fiasco. His obtuseness in not recognizing our binding contractual right to the same free expression guaranteed in the Constitution, and his stubbornness pushing the issue all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court has been stunning.

The Cost

Three sources of ours intimately familiar with this case and with lawyers’ billing rates estimate the legal fees Marquette has incurred at between $750,000 and $1,000,000.

But there were further costs. The Chronicle of Higher Education quotes Lovell (paywall):

The university has forcefully pushed back against McAdams’s narrative that the key issue is academic freedom. It pressed its case in advertisements in newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal. It set up a web page, complete with a timeline and fact-vs.-myth section. It hired a public-relations firm with a storytelling team.

“In terms of our brand and public perception,” Lovell says, “we were taking a beating. We thought it was important to at least try to get the truth out about what we felt our side of the story was.”

Marquette, in fact, even bought Google ads to lead web surfers to a page that attacks us.

None of this came out of Lovell’s pocket. He has spent other people’s money. It was either endowment, or tuition, or a combination of the two. His jihad against this blogger has been expensive.

Lovell’s Motivation

There are two theories about what moves Michael Lovell. One is that he is simply a careerist bureaucrat wanting to “move up” to a more prestigious institution. The theory is that his incessant pandering to the forces of political correctness is his strategy for doing this. Thus he demonstrated in sympathy with students at the University of Missouri — students who latched onto bogus grievances and began bullying everybody else on campus.

Thus he piously claimed to “stand against racism” when black students at Marquette were in an uproar about a “racist” photo that was not, in fact, racist.

It bears repeating: We shouldn’t expect only students of color to respond to racism. I’m asking all of @MarquetteU to join me and share why you #StandAgainstRacism pic.twitter.com/ZzS4nlSxqU

— Michael Lovell (@PresLovell) April 30, 2018

The other theory, one we are beginning to favor, is that Lovell is an actual social justice warrior. That, instead of being an opportunist, his pandering to the forces of political correctness is sincere, and his campaign to fire us was was a matter of conviction.

Unfortunately, having a president who is a sincere social justice warrior is even more toxic than having an opportunist bureaucrat. The latter might back off of a disastrous policy.

Two New Examples of Groundbreaking Social Research

First, a study relevant to the Iraq War:

Study: Iraqis May Experience Sadness When Friends, Relatives Die

CHAPEL HILL, NC—A field study released Monday by the University of North Carolina School of Public Health suggests that Iraqi citizens experience sadness and a sense of loss when relatives, spouses, and even friends perish.

Said [study director Jonathan] Pryztal: “When trying to understand the psychology of the Iraqi citizenry after four years of war, think of a small American town roiled by the death of a well-known high school football player.”

According to Pryztal, the intensity of the grief does not diminish if the mourner experiences multiple bereavements over time. “If a woman has already lost one child, the subsequent killings of other children will evoke similar responses,” he said. “In the majority of cases we studied, it appeared as though those who lost multiple kids never actually got used to it.”

Next, a study of college student behavior:

Mizzou Study Shows That Possessing a Fake ID Results in More Drinking by Underage College Students

COLUMBIA, Mo. - For college students under the age of 21, possessing a fake ID is a tell-tale sign of underage drinking.

With the upcoming collegiate school year approaching, researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia have completed a study examining fake ID ownership and heavy alcohol consumption by freshman and sophomore students. The team of psychologists discovered an increasing number of students obtained fake IDs during their first two years of college and that ownership resulted in more drinking during that period of time. Over the course of four semesters, fake ID ownership increased from 12.5 percent to 32.2 percent among students younger than the legal drinking age.

The study also revealed that students belonging to fraternities or sororities were more likely to own a fake ID.

“The biggest finding is that having a fake ID is a risk factor for additional drinking - drinking that might not otherwise be occurring,” said Kenneth J. Sher, professor of clinical psychology in the College of Arts and Science’s Department of Psychological Sciences. “The other piece is how ubiquitous it is - how many underage drinkers have a fake ID. Basically, being a heavy drinker predicts the likelihood that someone will obtain a fake ID, and having a fake ID predicts that someone will be a heavy drinker.”

One of these accounts comes from an official university website, and the other comes from The Onion.

Quick, before clicking through -- which one is which?

More Yik Yak: Missouri Students Show Resentment Toward Race Hustlers

From MSNBC (who doubtless think all these posts are terrible), a compilation of Yik Yak posts critical of the racial activists (and their white allies) who forced the resignation of the school’s president.

According to the network:

MSNBC took a look at Yik Yak, which uses geolocation to display messages in a certain area or around a certain university, and viewed messages posted by users at the University of Missouri campus. As of noon EST, these were some of the most popular messages on Yik Yak at the University of Missouri campus. Popularity is determined by users voting up or down on messages they like or dislike. The number of upvotes is displayed to the right of each message.

Here are the most popular ones, but read the rest.

One can see why campus race, gender and gay hustlers would like Yik Yak shut down, or at least allow posters to be identified so they can be punished for their politically incorrect attitudes.

This is social media giving a voice to the students who are ignored by the media, ignored by university administrations, and derided and demeaned if they should speak out openly.

Marquette: Encouraging Students to Skip School For Anti-Gun Protests

From Marquette University News:

Marquette issues statement on National School Walk Out Day

Marquette University reassured prospective students applying to Marquette they will not be held back from admission if they receive disciplinary action for taking part in National School Walk Out Day. “If a student receives disciplinary actions for peaceful protests, it will not affect your admission to Marquette,” the university said in a statement.

Story aired on WTMJ-TV (NBC 4), Feb. 27, 2018

This can only be read as encouraging students to participate in an anti-gun protest, which several school districts have said violates their rules.

Even if Marquette does not particularly wish to hold this bit of truancy against candidates for admission, explicitly saying that has to be viewed as a way of egging on participation in a controversial demonstration by violating school rules.

We wonder how Marquette would feel if a lot of employers announced that university disciplinary judgments against graduates would be ignored in hiring.

Broader Pattern

This fits a broader pattern of compulsive political correctness on the part of Marquette.

When a bunch of racial bullies at the University of Missouri concocted a variety of bogus racial grievances and essentially shut down that university, Marquette President Michael Lovell and Provost Dan Myers were right out on the street, with leftist Marquette students, demonstrating in support of the Missouri bullies.

And when a bunch of presidents of “Catholic” universities signed a statement demanding that the U.S. support the “climate change” agenda, Lovell’s signature was right there — among a dishonor roll of presidents of other universities that are Catholic in name only.

What is Lovell’s agenda? Does he wish to position Marquette as a leftist, politically correct institution where conservatives are marginalized? That’s not a good place for a “Catholic” (or Catholic) university to be. The competition is tough in that very crowded sector of the market.

Is he trying to pander to leftist faculty and student activists? If so, why is he doing things that are so gratuitous? Things were there is no perceptible pressure on him.

Is he an inept administrator, allowing leftist subordinates to set the agenda?

Or is he, himself, a leftist who can’t resist signing onto any leftist cause?

Child Abuse Most Likely in Out of Wedlock Cohabitation

Via Modern Commentaries, an article from the Associated Press:

NEW YORK - Six-year-old Oscar Jimenez Jr. was beaten to death in California, then buried under fertilizer and cement. Two-year-old Devon Shackleford was drowned in an Arizona swimming pool. Jayden Cangro, also 2, died after being thrown across a room in Utah.

In each case, as in many others every year, the alleged or convicted perpetrator had been the boyfriend of the child’s mother — men thrust into father-like roles which they tragically failed to embrace.

Every case is different, every family is different. Some single mothers bring men into their lives who lovingly help raise children when the biological father is gone for good.

Nonetheless, many scholars and front-line caseworkers interviewed by The Associated Press see the abusive-boyfriend syndrome as part of a broader trend that deeply worries them. They note an ever-increasing share of America’s children grow up in homes without both biological parents, and say the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures.

“This is the dark underbelly of cohabitation,” said Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia. “Cohabitation has become quite common, and most people think, ‘What’s the harm?’ The harm is we’re increasing a pattern of relationships that’s not good for children.”

The existing data on child abuse in America is patchwork, making it difficult to track national trends with precision.

However, there are many other studies that, taken together, reinforce the concerns. Among the findings:

• Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents, according to a study of Missouri abuse reports published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2005.
  
• Children living in stepfamilies or with single parents are at higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents, according to several studies co-authored by David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center.
  
• Girls whose parents divorce are at significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father, according to research by Robin Wilson, a family law professor at Washington and Lee University.

None of this is new.

One of our routine exercises with students is to ask them “what is the strongest factor that is likely to result in child abuse.”

They always give the politically correct answer: “That the parent was abused.”

We then distribute a graph bases on British data (which is more complete than U.S. data) showing that children living with their biological mother and a live-in boyfriend are 33 time more likely to be abused that children living with their married biological parents.

In fact, the same data show that a child whose mom’s live-in boyfriend is living in the household is 73 times more likely to be fatally abused than a child with married biological parents.

Of course we then ask students: “why didn’t you know this? Why has this information been withheld from you?”

The reason, of course, is that it’s politically incorrect to question people’s sexual behavior -- even if it has nasty social consequences.

And this from people who will happily attack people for merely owning an SUV.

Still More Gay Fascism in Academia: Stalinist Thought Reform in Counseling Program

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

A graduate student in school counseling is accusing Augusta State University in federal court of violating her constitutional rights by demanding that she work to change her views opposing homosexuality.

In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Augusta, Ga., the student, Jennifer Keeton, argues that faculty members and administrators at the university have violated her First Amendment rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion by threatening her with expulsion if she does not fulfill requirements contained in a remediation plan intended to get her to change her beliefs.

Ms. Keeton’s lawsuit accuses the university of being “ideologically heavy-handed” in imposing the requirements on her “simply because she has communicated both inside and outside the classroom that she holds to Christian ethical convictions on matters of human sexuality and gender identity.” It argues that her views, which hold that homosexual behavior is immoral and that homosexuality is a chosen lifestyle, would not interfere with her ability to provide competent counseling to gay men and lesbians.

An Augusta State spokeswoman, Kathy D. Schofe, declined on Thursday to comment on the litigation, saying that the university had not yet been served with the lawsuit and officials there would need time to devise a response.

Ms. Keeton is being represented by lawyers affiliated with the Alliance Defense Fund, a coalition of Christian lawyers. The group has brought a similar lawsuit on behalf of an Eastern Michigan University graduate student who alleges she was dismissed from a counseling program for her beliefs about homosexuality. In 2006 the group extracted major concessions from Missouri State University in settling a lawsuit filed by a former social-work student who refused to respect a class project’s requirement that she sign a letter to the state legislature in support of homosexual adoption.

In a news release announcing the lawsuit against Augusta State, David French, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, said: “A public-university student shouldn’t be threatened with expulsion for being Christian and refusing to publicly renounce her faith, but that’s exactly what’s happening here. Simply put, the university is imposing thought reform.”

The lawsuit says Ms. Keeton has stated in classroom discussions and written assignments that she believes sexual behavior “is the result of accountable personal choice,” that people are born male or female, and that homosexuality is a lifestyle and not a “state of being.” It says faculty members at Augusta State confronted her about her beliefs based on such statements and on a student’s claim that Ms. Keeton has advocated “conversion therapy” for homosexuals in conversations with her peers—an allegation that Ms. Keeton denies.

The lawsuit says Augusta State faculty members developed a remediation plan specifically for Ms. Keeton and told her she would be expelled from the College of Education’s counselor-education program if she did not fulfill its requirements. The plan calls on Ms. Keeton to attend workshops on serving diverse populations, read articles on counseling gay, lesbian, and bisexual and transgendered people, and write reports to an adviser summarizing what she has learned. It also instructs her to work to increase her exposure to, and interaction with, gay populations, and suggests that she attend the local gay-pride parade. Ms. Keeton has refused to comply.

In other words, Stalinist reeducation reform.

Any time a story like this appears, watch the comments following the story. They will make it clear that a lot of people hate Christians, or at least hate Christians who dissent from politically correct views on sexuality.

So then the question arises: Why aren’t students who make it clear that they are gay, or make it clear that they are atheists, questioned on whether they could counsel people who are conservative Christians?

If having certain opinions is a bona fide occupational qualification, why not be even handed?

Of course, maybe they can convincingly answer “I’m able to be professional, even if I fundamentally disagree with the client.” But the same answer should be acceptable from a Christian.

We all know the answer to that. The new Puritans are politically correct leftists, and they are intolerant of ideas they disagree with.

Follow-Up: Thought Police in Schools of Social Work

We recently blogged on the case of a Missouri State University student who was punished because her Christian views prevented her from engaging in a activism project that the professor favored.

She was assigned to write a letter to the state legislature demanding that gays be given the right to be foster parents.

With the help of the Alliance Defense Fund she went to court, and has now been vindicated. According to the News-Leader:

Missouri State University has settled a lawsuit brought by a former student who accused a faculty member and the school of violating her First Amendment rights.

Emily Brooker, who graduated from MSU last spring, will have her academic record cleared, be paid cash for her attorneys’ fees and have her tuition fees waived for graduate school as part of the settlement.

In addition, her instructor, Frank G. Kauffman, will give up his administrative duties and be put on nonclassroom duties for the rest of the semester.

He has not lost his job, MSU President Mike Nietzel said. “I expect him to be teaching in the spring,” he said.

Kauffman could not be reached for comment at his home or office.

“We acted quickly on these allegations as soon as we became aware of them. It was a priority for this office,” Nietzel said Wednesday after the settlement was announced.

In the complaint, Brooker alleges she faced a college ethics committee for allegedly violating the School of Social Works’ “Standards of Essential Functioning in Social Work Education.” She had refused to sign a letter supporting homosexual adoption.

Brooker, who has referred all questions to her attorneys, said in the suit that she faced a 2 ½-hour interrogation by faculty members, who, according to the complaint, asked her personally invasive questions such as: “Do you think gays and lesbians are sinners?” and “Do you think I am a sinner?”

David French, director of the Alliance Defense Fund’s Center for Academic Freedom, which filed the suit, could not be reached for comment but said last week that there is a growing trend of Christian students speaking out against ideological teachings in college classrooms.

“The university is supposed to be the marketplace of ideas, and professors should be tolerant of the opinions of Christian students as well as those of non-Christian students,” French said.

The university responded last week with a statement that the school “has been and is committed to protecting the rights of its students, as well as its faculty and staff, including free speech and expression, and freedom of religion.”

For the past week, Nietzel and Provost Belinda McCarthy have been interviewing people connected to the program.

“Although our investigation did not support all of the allegations made in the lawsuit, we were concerned about some of the actions that we did learn about,” Nietzel said.

The investigation did confirm that the social work department has an ethics committee that conducts hearings like the one Brooker mentioned in her suit.

Nietzel said he was not aware of such a committee and as a result of that and other findings, he will commission an evaluation of the social work program by outside experts.

“It’s important for current and prospective students, for potential employers and for the faculty and staff in the program to have confidence that the policies, procedures, leadership and delivery of the programs are up to par,” he said.

The program’s review could start in the spring, Nietzel said.

The president will also appoint an ad hoc committee to recommend ways for the university to better publicize and implement policies regarding freedom of speech and expression on campus.

“We have strong and effective grievance policies in place. We need to make sure that all members of the campus community are familiar with (them).”

It’s good that the law can vindicate Christians whose rights have been infringed.

Unfortunately, most Christian students probably just accept second-class treatment rather than go to the trouble of making an issue of it. But outcomes like this should be an encouragement. You don’t have to accept religious discrimination.

Hopefully, they will also have a chilling effect on secular leftists in academia. We don’t want legitimate academic freedom compromised, but discriminating in any way against students for Christian or other conservative views ought to be dangerous, just as discriminating against (say) blacks, gays or Hispanics is dangerous.

Not All College Students are Intimidated

From the Wall Street Journal:

Not least among those welcoming the respite of Thanksgiving must be the nation’s college and university administrators. After student protests evicted Tim Wolfe as president of the University of Missouri, officials at other institutions of higher learning (if we may still call them that) were harassed by shouting or otherwise threatening students. At Princeton University, students occupied the office of the school’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, demanding that he throw Woodrow Wilson down the memory hole.

Even at the remove of several weeks, it is remarkable to recall that the disturbance at Yale University was over “offensive” Halloween costumes. But amid the protests, some important principles are now at risk, notably free speech. We asked at the time where the adults were on campus—either school presidents or boards of trustees? The answer, so far, is that most have caved like wet cardboard. The most hopeful adult response has come from 18- to 22-year olds—the students themselves.

At Claremont McKenna, where a dean was driven from office over a supposedly objectionable email, the student editors of the Claremont Independent published “We Dissent.”

The editors took themselves to task for not speaking out earlier. But no more. Their editorial ended: “We are not immoral because we don’t buy the flawed rhetoric of a spiteful movement. We are not evil because we don’t want this movement to tear across our campuses completely unchecked. We are no longer afraid to be voices of dissent.”

This political courage may be catching on. At Princeton last week, students under the banner of the Open Campus Coalition sent President Eisgruber their own strong statement of dissent. It describes a student body intimidated to silence by the likelihood of being vilified, in public or on social media. It ends: “Princeton undergraduates opposed to the curtailment of academic freedom refuse to remain silent out of fear of being slandered.” They signed their names and class years, and we hope their professors don’t dock their grades for thinking for themselves.

With campus administrators and faculty cowed by political correctness run amok, these students are shaping a movement of principled, civilized dissent. Let’s hope it grows.

So where are the dissenters on the Marquette campus? Turning Point USA has an honorable history. The College Republicans have hardly been heard from. Where are other conservative student groups?

In fact, we know the answer: campus leftists are aggressive and intolerant, and it takes a lot of guts to face them down. Most students don’t want the grief, so they speak up when anonymity is guaranteed, in such places as the Climate Survey and Yik Yak. But like most people most of the time they simply withdraw in order to avoid the bullies.

But the few who don’t count as heroes.

Fascists: Leftist Students at University of Missouri Impede Press Photographer

It’s a stunning display of arrogance and intolerance.

And these are the kind of people, remember, who got the President of their university fired.


[Update]
Most people would consider this behavior unacceptable. But not the student activists, who care little about press freedom. And not one student activist who talked to MSNBC:

Naomi Collier, a student activist at the University of Missouri, defended the treatment of a journalist who was attacked while trying to cover the unfolding events on campus.

On Monday, Tim Tai, a student journalist contracted with ESPN trying to cover the protests on campus, was accosted by the school’s Greek Life director and protesters.

When Tai approached students in the protest to get their opinion he was told he needed to go. The situation escalated and one protester asked for “some muscle” to remove Tai.

Collier told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell it was a “peaceful protest” and Tai was just a victim of the “backlash” from “fed up” students. Collier also said the student journalist was “insensitive” to the “feelings and emotions that [were] present at that time.”

“Is there a way to get back to some sort of civil discourse here or there is still so much tension,” Mitchell asked Collier.

“Definitely,” Collier said. “I do believe that we are getting back to that civil discourse. I believe the whole thing was civil. At no point did anything get violent, everything was a peaceful protest, even with the camp-out. There was nothing that got, in my opinion, out of control. The students are fed up.”

“As far as the media’s concerned, at times they can be overwhelming and insensitive to the feelings and emotions that are present at that time. I think what that photographer experienced was kind of the backlash of that, and again, he may have just been ignorant or uneducated about how that particular group of students were feeling at the time and again.”

Thought Police in Schools of Social Work

From Inside Higher Ed:

Lawyers at the Alliance Defense Fund have filed a complaint in federal district court on behalf of a former Missouri State University student who says that the university punished her for failing to take part in a class assignment that went against her beliefs as a Christian.

Emily Brooker, who graduated from the university’s School of Social Work last spring, took issue with a project in which students were asked to draft and individually sign a letter to Missouri legislators that supported the right of gay people to be foster parents, according to the complaint.

The assignment was eventually shelved, but the complaint says officials in the social work school charged Brooker with the highest-level grievance for not following guidelines on diversity, interpersonal skills and professional behavior. According to the complaint, during a hearing before an ethics committee, faculty members asked Brooker: “Do you think gays and lesbians are sinners? Do you think I am a sinner?” and questioned whether she could assist gay men and women as a professional social worker.

David French, a senior legal counsel with the ADF and the director of their Center for Academic Freedom, says the class assignment was more than a case of political role-playing — it amounted to a restriction of students’ free speech, he said.

“A person was forced to publicly state a position on a hot-button cultural issue to her own government that she disagrees with. You can’t get a more fundamental violation of the First Amendment than that,” French said. “[Brooker] objected, and then she was subject to investigation and punishment.”

Brooker, who began at Missouri State in 2002, took a required welfare policy and services class in spring 2005 taught by Frank G. Kauffman, an assistant professor of social work. During the class, the complaint alleges that Kauffman stated that he is a “liberal” and that social work is a “liberal profession.”

Brooker took another course with Kauffman in the fall. As part of a social work advocacy project, Brooker joined a group that planned to focus on homelessness. But according to the complaint, after a class visit from a gay advocacy group, Kauffman suggested that the whole class work on the letter-writing project supporting the right of gay people to be foster parents.

Brooker told the professor that she was happy to learn about the topic, but that — along with other students — was uncomfortable signing the letter because of her religious convictions, the complaint says. Kauffman allowed Brooker to write and sign a letter on an alternative subject, and the original project was later thrown out, according to the complaint.

About a month later, Brooker received notification that she had violated School of Social Work standards. In December, before an ethics committee, Kauffman said that Brooker “resisted instruction,” the complaint says. Brooker said faculty members told her that her values coflicted with those articulated by a national social workers’ association.

In the comments posted in response to this article, one poster suggested that “critical thinking skills” might be promoted by requiring that a student write a statement contrary to his or her own political views.

And indeed law school students are often required to do exactly this. And some liberal law school students are objected when required to write briefs contrary to the “gay rights.”

The problem is that this particular professor isn’t promoting some “critical thinking” agenda, he’s using students to promote his own pet political cause.

Promoting critical thinking might involve randomly assigning students to opposite positions on the issue. Or it might involve requiring both liberal and conservative students to write statements contrary to their views.

But Frank G. Kauffman wouldn’t think of doing that.

Equally silly is asking “Do you think gays and lesbians are sinners?” and questioning whether a Christian could help homosexuals.

The politically correct types in social work schools would never think of asking a leftist student “Do you think business executives are evil?” and questioning whether a leftist could help business people.

The politically correct types in social work schools would never think of asking a feminist student “Do you think men are the oppressor class?” and questioning whether she could help men.

This case is very similiar (indeed almost identical) to one at the School of Social Work at Rhode Island College, in which a student was threatened with punishment if he failed to lobby the state legislature for liberal policies with which he disagreed.

Like schools of education, social work schools have convinced themselves they have the right to indoctrinate students, and punish those who resist brainwashing.

Any Discipline for Students Who Vandalized Anti-Abortion Display?

It was an outrage. A bunch of feminist students, members of the campus group Empowerment vandalized an anti-abortion display on campus.

Even worse, in a huge display of chutzpah, two students bragged about doing it on Facebook, one in her own post, and another in comments to a post from the Young Americans for Freedom. One of the students admitted to a reporter that she had “tagged along” with members of Empowerment when they trashed the display.

Both the College Democrats, and the group Empowerment came out with statements supporting the vandalism.

Had any conservative group supported the vandalism of any leftist display on campus, the group would have been quickly suspended.

But what about the students who actually did the vandalism? Were they punished in any way? We have been trying to find out, and have been stonewalled by Marquette.

Starting on October 24, we have sent three e-mails to Xavier Cole, Vice President for Student Affairs, within whose bureaucracy discipline would be administered. We also sent him one Tweet, and sent an e-mail to Brian Dorrington, Marquette’s official spokesman.

From: John McAdams
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2016 2:52 PM
To: Cole, Xavier
Subject: Investigation of Vandalizing of Anti-Abortion Display

Hi, Xavier,

I’m wondering whether you can tell me anything about the progress of the investigation into the vandalizing of the anti-abortion display of Marquette for Life.

I’m sure you are aware of two students who have confessed to (actually bragged about) taking part in it. And further that one of those students told a local reporter that she “tagged along” with members of Empowerment, who did the vandalizing.

Regardless of whether you can comment on the investigation, I’m assuming you can answer a question of policy: will Marquette announce the results of the investigation and what punishment has been meted out to the guilty parties?

On the record (unless you tell me otherwise).

John McAdams
Political Science
Marquette Warrior Blog

@DrXavierCole Are students who vandalized the anti-abortion display being disciplined in any way?

— jmcadams (@jmcadams) November 18, 2016

From: John McAdams
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2016 4:15 PM
To: Cole, Xavier
Subject: RE: Investigation of Vandalizing of Anti-Abortion Display

Hi, Xavier,

I haven’t heard from you on this, perhaps because when you got it, there was no actual information you could share.

But now, I’m assuming that the case has progressed.

I’m particularly interested in knowing whether any discipline has been imposed on the students who engaged in the vandalism.

I would also be interested in knowing whether the student group whose members engaged in the vandalism (Empowerment) and a student group which explicitly endorsed the vandalism (College Democrats) have faced any consequences.

Again, on the record unless you tell me otherwise. I’ll most certainly be blogging about this.
John McAdams
Marquette Warrior Blog

Tue 12/6/2016 4:13 PM
From: John McAdams
To: Brian Dorrington

Hi, Brian,

Can you give me an official statement as to whether any discipline was imposed on the Marquette students who vandalized an anti-abortion display on campus?

I’m sure you are aware that Marquette’s silence on this will necessarily lead to the conclusion that nothing was done, and Marquette implicitly condoned the vandalism.

Interestingly, Penn State does take vandalism of a political display seriously.

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=8468

John McAdams
Political Science
Marquette Warrior Blog

12/14/16
From: John McAdams To: Xavier Cole

Xavier,

I still haven’t heard from you on this.

I’m sure you know that, in the absence of any comment from Marquette to the contrary, it has to be assumed that the students in question were not disciplined at all.

Some universities take attacks on speech seriously.

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/12/05/penn-state-students-fined-for-destroying-pro-trump-signs/

I hope to hear from you by the end of the day.

John McAdams
Political Science
Marquette Warrior Blog

Marquette has failed to provide any response.

The inference is obvious: the students have gotten off scott-free. Even if Marquette refused to reveal the identity of the students, they could explain what punishment has been meted out. But apparently, none has been.

Marquette has been pandering mightily to the campus leftists. One particularly egregious example was when both Michael Lovell (President) and Daniel J. Myers (Provost) demonstrated with students in support of the bullies at the University of Missouri.

As the links above show, Penn State was willing to discipline students who tore up Donald Trump signs. It’s ironic that Marquette, apparently, is unwilling to defend free expression on campus, and even to defend expression of the Catholic position on abortion.

Update

The vandals in fact received a minor, “slap on the wrist” punishment.

New Academic Media Bias Study

Not that there has been any doubt about this for a long time, but a new academic study from a UCLA political scientist and a University of Missouri economist shows a clear liberal political bias in the media.

Tim Groseclose (UCLA) and Jeff Milyo (Missouri) used an innovative technique that took advantage of the fact that liberal members of Congress (as measured by their votes on roll-calls) tend to cite certain activist groups, think tanks and research institutes, while conservatives disproportionately cite different ones. Where liberals are particularly likely to cite (for example) the NAACP and the Childrens’ Defense Fund conservatives are more likely to cite the Manhattan Institute or the Heritage Foundation.

So what about the sources the media cite? Do they more frequently cite the same sources as congressional liberals, or congressional conservatives? Quoting the study:

Our results show a strong liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Consistent with many conservative critics, CBS Evening News and the New York Times received a score far left of center. Outlets such as USA Today, NPR’s Morning Edition, NBC’s Nightly News and ABC’s World News Tonight were moderately left. The most centrist outlets (but still left-leaning) by our measure were the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN’s NewsNight with Aaron Brown, and ABC’s Good Morning America. Fox News’ Special Report, while right of center, was closer to the center than any of the three major networks’ evening news broadcasts.

They then go on to explain:

All of our findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample.

Of course, opinion and editorial pieces might show a different result. For example, the study shows the Wall Street Journal to be quite liberal, in spite of having a famously conservative editorial page.

But bias in what purports to be “hard news” is more striking since it is a clear violation of proclaimed journalistic norms of objectivity. And it’s doubtless more insidious, since readers and viewers fully expect editorials and opinion columns to be . . . well . . . opinionated.

When one of the authors presented the paper at a faculty forum that included some members of the Journalism Department, the latter were visibly squirming.

The Left Opposes Direct Democracy

In the wake of an election during which conservatives scores some signal victories in ballot issues (referenda), it’s interesting to review the history of direct democracy, and why the left now hates it.

From the Wall Street Journal:

A total of 24 states allow voters to change laws on their own by collecting signatures and putting initiatives on the ballot. It’s healthy that the entrenched political class should face some real legislative competition from initiative-toting citizens. Unfortunately, some special interests have declared war on the initiative process, using tactics ranging from restrictive laws to outright thuggery.

The initiative is a reform born out of the Progressive Era, when there was general agreement that powerful interests had too much influence over legislators. It was adopted by most states in the Midwest and West, including Ohio and California. It was largely rejected by Eastern states, which were dominated by political machines, and in the South, where Jim Crow legislators feared giving more power to ordinary people.

But more power to ordinary people remains unpopular in some quarters, and nothing illustrates the war on the initiative more than the reaction to Ward Connerly’s measures to ban racial quotas and preferences. The former University of California regent has convinced three liberal states -- California, Washington and Michigan -- to approve race-neutral government policies in public hiring, contracting and university admissions. He also prodded Florida lawmakers into passing such a law. This year his American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) aimed to make the ballot in five more states. But thanks to strong-arm tactics, the initiative has only made the ballot in Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska.

“The key to defeating the initiative is to keep it off the ballot in the first place,” says Donna Stern, Midwest director for the Detroit-based By Any Means Necessary (BAMN). “That’s the only way we’re going to win.” Her group’s name certainly describes the tactics that are being used to thwart Mr. Connerly.

Aggressive legal challenges have bordered on the absurd, going so far as to claim that a blank line on one petition was a “duplicate” of another blank line on another petition and thus evidence of fraud. In Missouri, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan completely rewrote the initiative’s ballot summary to portray it in a negative light. By the time courts ruled she had overstepped her authority, there wasn’t enough time to collect sufficient signatures.

Those who did circulate petitions faced bizarre obstacles. In Kansas City, a petitioner was arrested for collecting signatures outside of a public library. Officials finally allowed petitioners a table inside the library but forbade them to talk. In Nebraska, a group in favor of racial preferences ran a radio ad that warned that those who signed the “deceptive” petition “could be at risk for identity theft, robbery, and much worse.”

Mr. Connerly says that it’s ironic that those who claim to believe in “people power” want to keep people from voting on his proposal: “Their tactics challenge the legitimacy of our system.”

What about voters’ rights to sign ACRI’s petitions? BAMN organizer Monica Smith equates race-neutral laws with Jim-Crow segregation laws and slavery. She told Tuscon columnist Denogean that voters are simply being educated that ACRI is “trying to end affirmative action . . . We let them know it’s up on the KKK’s Web site.” Mr. Connerly has repudiated any support from racists.

The war against citizen initiatives has other fronts. This year in Michigan, taxpayer groups tried to recall House Speaker Andy Dillon after he pushed through a 12% increase in the state income tax. But petitioners collecting the necessary 8,724 signatures in his suburban Detroit district were set upon. In Redford, police union members held a rally backing Mr. Dillon and would alert blockers to the location of recall petitioners. Outsiders would then surround petitioners and potential signers, using threatening language.

This is a nation were supporters of racial preferences are well-organized and well-represented in legislatures, courts and even business firms (which are the willing victims of a protection racket run by the left), direct democracy gives voice to the people.

The reality is similar where gay marriage is concerned. The elites are on one side, and the majority of the American people are on the other.

In such an environment, the left too often resorts to thuggery to frustrate the public will.