Professor John McAdams who was suspended by Jesuit Marquette University for being guilty of Catholicism, go here to read all about it, has won a complete victory before the Wisconsin Surprem Court:
Three and a half years after being fired for critiquing a graduate student’s attempt to silence a student critical of gay marriage, professor John McAdams can return to the classroom
MADISON, Wis., July 6, 2018 — In a win for academic freedom, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled today that Marquette University wrongly fired Professor John McAdams for comments he made on his personal blog in 2014.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education filed a “friend of the court” brief last November urging the court to hear McAdams’ case and reach this result.
McAdams criticized a graduate teaching instructor by name for her refusal to allow a student to debate gay rights because “everybody agrees on this.” Marquette effectively fired McAdams later that year, suspending him indefinitely without pay.
Today, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said Marquette’s decision violated its guarantee of academic freedom to McAdams and ordered his immediate reinstatement.
“The undisputed facts show that the University breached its contract with Dr. McAdams when it suspended him for engaging in activity protected by the contract’s guarantee of academic freedom,” the court wrote. “Therefore, we reverse the circuit court and remand this cause with instructions to enter judgment in favor of Dr. McAdams, conduct further proceedings to determine damages (which shall include back pay), and order the University to immediately reinstate Dr. McAdams with unimpaired rank, tenure, compensation, and benefits.”
McAdams, a professor of political science, wrote on his personal blog, Marquette Warrior, about a recorded interaction in which a graduate student philosophy instructor told her student that his opinions opposing gay marriage “are not appropriate.”
A month later, without presenting him with any formal charges, Marquette suspended McAdams, cancelled his classes, and banned him from campus. The college later insinuated that McAdams violated a harassment policy, and that his punishments stemmed from his naming the instructor in his blog post and linking to her own, publicly available, blog.
“As FIRE has argued since the beginning, Marquette was wrong to fire John McAdams simply for criticizing a graduate student instructor who unilaterally decided that a matter of political interest was no longer up for debate by students,” said FIRE Executive Director Robert Shibley. “This ruling rightly demonstrates that when a university promises academic freedom, it is required to deliver.”
FIRE wrote to Marquette in 2015, calling on the university to restore McAdams’ standing on campus and arguing that the school “repeatedly ignored its own policies governing faculty speech and due process, and has severely imperiled free speech and academic freedom through its unjust actions.” FIRE also noted that Marquette’s actions were in direct conflict with a statement from former Marquette President Fr. Robert Wild, who, while defending a faculty member facing similar criticism, said that faculty members’ academic freedom rights are subject “to the criticism of their peers.”
Go here to read the rest. Marquette is a fierce defender of a faith, but that faith is Leftism. Professor McAdams was a heretic against that faith and therefore Marquette attempted to deprive him of his livelihood, and his vocation of teaching, for daring to speak out against their sacred cow. That good Catholic parents send their kids to places like Marquette is beyond obscene.
Just checked Marquette’s website for the latest on what that
supposedly catholic university charges. Evidently they expect
upwards of $54,000 / year to properly indoctrinate one’s child.
No thanks. For that kind of money, folks could afford to send
their kids to a university that is actually Catholic.
http://www.marquette.edu/explore/tuition.php
Marquette University is another corrupt Jesuit (formerly Catholic) University. Catholic parents are out of their minds if they send their kids to a place like this which is heretically Catholic, philosophically irrational, anti-free speech and generally un-American.
Marquette’s sacred cow is now hamburger.
It’s totalitarianism. Only an intellectual could evade or ignore that conclusion.
Anyhow, studying Philosophy is one of be best ways, I have encountered, to be unable to repay one’s student loans.
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I’m a (formerly proud) Marquette alum (BA, 1981) who has grown very disenchanted with the current moral state of affairs. Dr. McAdams’s mistreatment is only one example. Currently there’s an online petition asking MU to stop sponsoring, and by that I mean funding, a pro-abortion club, Marquette Empowerment. I signed the petition and got a mass-emailed response from MU’s president that basically said that ALL viewpoints are welcome. (How about sponsoring a neo-Nazi group so that a racist viewpoint would be welcome? It would make just as much sense.)
A couple of years ago, pro-choice students embedded coat hangers and pro-abort slogans into a university-sponsored pro-life exhibit. And guess what? The pro-choicers were reprimanded and the coat hangers were removed! But the statement by the VP pointed out that this was NOT because of the pro-choice stance but because the pro-choicers didn’t follow protocol and instead defaced an approved exhibit.
Nowhere in any of these cases has MU’s administration said, “This is what we support because we are a Catholic university.” I did get a good education at MU, but even back then, there were very Leftist/social justice profs, including some who were members of the Society of Jesus. I was very liberal-leaning, and I am glad I finally recovered from that particular mental illness.
All you need to know is the following equation:
Jesuit institution = homosexual institution
A million reasons why Marquette was wrong on this matter. However, on the narrow matter before the Court, this was a loss for conservative principles. it basically ruled that the Government could compel a private employer (and a religious one at that) to employer a person the religious private employer no longer wanted, all on the basis of it being “unfair” and some vaguely worded contract language about “academic freedom.”
Kurt it is black letter law that once a private institution promulgates rules governing how it deals with its employees that courts may treat those rules as a contract between the employer and the employee. Fundamentally this was a simple breach of contract case. The text of the decision is linked below:
https://www.wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/DisplayDocument.pdf?content=pdf&seqNo=215236
No one who has not attended Marquette University can understand the depth of evil that is that institution.
I graduated there 10 years ago with a BA and MS. The central “crime” of McAdams was his defense of students. It wasn’t even politics. He was the only faculty member who could overcome their embarrassment with being associated with the Marquette bureaucracy to get involved in students’ lives. No one else did, not even a little. He did it for conservative students. He did it for liberal students. If any student or organization was unjustly attacked by the bureaucracy, McAdams would do everything in his power to save them, including from ludicrous expulsions.
A word on Marquette. I cannot think of a better way to ensure that a person can be driven to either atheism or insanity or depression or all of the above than by attending such a place for college. You will get a more Catholic experience at any Big 10 university in the Midwest. And as a bonus, people outside of Wisconsin will know you did not attend college in the Upper Peninsula.
I firmly believe there is no more overpaid, useless higher ed bureaucracy in the United States than that at Marquette. You cannot imagine the seething inferiority complex of a bureaucrat who feels he belongs at Notre Dame, Georgetown or Fordham but is stuck in crummy Milwaukee. It oozes out of their pores. It defines them. And it should. Marquette has one of the worst 5 or 10 yield rates in the entire country. It is the definition of a backup school.
The fact that McAdams got fired for ***defending a student*** tells you all you need to know about Marquette’s ferocity. Ultimately, Marquette got sick and tired of having one of its faculty members use his position to defend the students who were paying their bills and making them very, very wealthy.
I visited the campus sometime within the last year or so. I can tell you that with tuition & room now well north of $50,000, Marquette has had to rely on the Big 10 method of tuition price floors – at least a quarter of the student body are now foreign Chinese or Indian. As little as 10 years ago, it was practically nothing. Marquette can’t get the applicants or students it used to.
As someone suggested, the flaming homosexuality throughout the entire administration fuels so much of the campus atmosphere. It’s all but open. And when you read statements like the one Marquette released after the WI SCOTUS decision, you know you are dealing with very troubled, very demonic people.
At the end of the day, as Dr. McAdams has said himself, you can get liberalism a lot cheaper.
Fascinating Brian, and an aspect of the controversy too often overlooked. McAdams was attempting to stand up for an undergrad against a TA who obviously thought her role was propagandist rather than instructor.
“While Marquette paints McAdams as the harasser whose actions were “disturbing,” pretrial discovery revealed a different reality. A few days after the blog post, Abbate called McAdams a “bigoted moron,” an “uncritical, creepy homophobic person with bad argumentation skills,” “a flaming bigot, sexist and homophobic idiot,” and for good measure added he had an “ugly face.”
The chair of Marquette’s Philosophy Department also had some choice words, referring to McAdams in writing as a “right wing lunatic.” The chair also called the student who had complained about Abbate—identified in court proceedings only as JD—a “insulin [sic] little twerp,” a “little twit,” and a “jackass.””
A good summary of what went on is here:
http://thefederalist.com/2018/01/31/10-crazy-things-inside-professors-lawsuit-marquette-university-firing-defending-free-speech/
The Jesuits were proscribed by Rome in the early 19th century though later reinstated. Unfortunate that a little more thought was not given to the issue before reinstatement.
Shame on EWTN’s News Nightly and their anchor Lauren Ashburn for covering this decision by interviewing only the attorney for Marquette and not the professor, his attorney or the bullied student who tried to defend marriage.