Prof defiant as Marquette moves to fire him for outing pro-gay intolerance
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| Logo of Marquette University (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The Wisconsin Jesuit university that suspended
a tenured professor after his
blog post exposed a student’s apparent harassment by a graduate assistant for
not supporting homosexual “marriage” has moved closer toward firing the
instructor.
Marquette
University suspended
Political Science Professor John McAdams without pay during Holy Week and said
it intends to terminate him if he doesn’t apologize for the 2014 blog post.
The suspension is effective April 1, extending through the fall
2016 semester.
McAdams wrote on his blog March 26 that his return to the faculty in
January 2017 is contingent upon his submitting a written statement
acknowledging his wrongdoing to President Michael Lovell by April 4, and
admitting his blog post “was reckless and incompatible with the mission and
values of Marquette University,” as well as expressing “deep regret for the
harm suffered” by the former graduate student.
“These demands are reminiscent of the Inquisition, in which
victims who ‘confessed’ they had been consorting with Satan and spreading
heresy would be spared execution,” McAdams wrote.
The University first suspended McAdams with pay and threatened
to strip him of his tenure and fire him in February of last year, after his
November 2014 blog post on a philosophy student being told by an instructor
that he was not able to make “homophobic” comments in class.
The instructor had stated in class that everyone agreed with
“gay rights” and therefore there was no need to discuss the issue, prompting
the student to indicate to her after class that he didn’t support homosexual
“marriage” and desired further discussion on it. The instructor said it would
be offensive to any homosexual students in the class if his opinion were to be
expressed, and ultimately invited the student to drop her class if he didn’t
agree with her position.
In addition to being suspended with pay at the time, McAdams was
banned from campus.
In an announcement to the Marquette community last Thursday
Lovell said he couldn’t comment on specifics since it was a personnel matter,
but stated, “I can assure you that my decision has been guided by Marquette
University’s values and is solely based on Professor McAdams’ actions, and not
political or ideological views expressed in his blog.”
“It is bizarre that Lovell can invoke Marquette’s ‘guiding
values’ to contravene the black letter guarantees of academic freedom embodied
in University Statutes,” McAdams responded in his blog.
“Is free speech a ‘guiding value’ of Marquette?” he asked. “Apparently
not. Is protecting students who want to argue for Catholic teaching about
marriage from bullying a ‘guiding value’ of Marquette? Apparently, it’s not
either.”
He went on to say that when the student had complained about his
treatment by the instructor, the University’s Philosophy Department treated him
with hostility, and that not only was the instructor not reprimanded, “it was
conveyed to her that she had done nothing wrong.”
McAdams said the demand for an apology and his signing a vaguely
defined loyalty oath was simply a ploy to create an excuse to fire him.
“But the ploy is absolutely transparent, and won’t mitigate the
realization that Marquette is an intolerant, politically correct institution
whose ‘Catholic mission’ is nothing but a marketing gimmick,” he wrote, making
clear he would not apologize or sign the oath.
McAdams has also
exposed other
cases of Catholic identity abuse at Marquette in the past.
He had blogged about concerns over the Catholic university’s definition
of social justice, saying that it doesn’t include opposition to abortion and
homosexual “marriage.”
Marquette
University employees were also told at a 2014 training seminar to report their
colleagues for harassment if they spoke openly against same-sex “marriage.”
Concerns over Marquette’s Catholic identity have surfaced for
different reasons, including the hiring of pro-abortion, pro-homosexual and pro-euthanasia faculty,LGBTQ
Masses, faculty clergy dissenting
from Church teaching, and faculty
censureof the U.S. Bishops for their opposition to the HHS Mandate.
