For a while there, it seemed as if the tide in academia had finally turned. Academic freedom, the idea that college campuses should be places of rigorous debate, seemed to be making a comeback.
Before the fall semester began, several schools sent letters to students informing them that they would not condone the creation of “safe spaces” on campus or support the idea of “trigger warnings” alerting students to potentially upsetting material in the classroom. Even President Obama, who in many ways personifies the campus liberal mindset, admonished the country in his farewell address to stop retreating into their own bubbles, including the ones that exist “on college campuses.”
Wisconsin’s largest private university didn’t get the memo. January 17 was the first day of class at Marquette University in Milwaukee. But it wasn’t a work day for John McAdams, a tenured political science professor at the school. His story is a reminder of just how much academic freedom remains under assault across the country.
In December 2014, McAdams was suspended after writing a post on his personal blog in which he criticized a graduate student/instructor for refusing to allow a discussion of viewpoints critical of same-sex marriage. The graduate instructor had told an undergraduate student in one of her philosophy classes that if he didn’t like her prohibition on “homophobic comments, racists comments and sexist comments,” he should drop the class.
The post elicited some national media coverage, which in turn prompted some people to send threatening and harassing emails to the graduate instructor. That unfortunate backlash was the reason McAdams was suspended, even though he had no role in sending them.
The university was in the process of firing McAdams over this (the graduate instructor has since left the school). Following a faculty committee hearing McAdams was told that he would be allowed back on campus, but only if he apologized for the blog post, acknowledged that it was “reckless” and agreed effectively never to blog on controversial topics ever again.
In response, McAdams sent the committee a five-page letter stating that these requirements constituted “yet another violation of the due process and the academic freedom provisions of the faculty statutes.”
Represented by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, McAdams is suing the school for breach of contract. WILL says McAdams’ suspension “violates his contractual rights of personal expression and academic freedom.”
Marquette’s Faculty Handbook says professors may be terminated only for “serious instances of illegal, immoral, dishonorable, irresponsible, or incompetent conduct.”
McAdams’ blog post doesn’t seem to rise to that level. Marquette is a Catholic school with a Jesuit tradition, and McAdams has noted for years that the school has been accommodating a culture that’s directly at odds with Catholic teaching on moral issues such as same-sex marriage (the Church teaches that homosexual sex is a sin), even to the point that the school risks losing its Catholic identity.
This case is about academic freedom, but it’s also about how a good professor’s career can be placed on hold because he dared to stand up for the tenets of his school’s professed faith tradition.
The Catholic Church began downplaying the theory of limbo a decade ago. But an academic version of it is where McAdams will remain until at least this summer, when his case goes to trial.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
