MILWAUKEE, Wis. — Had John McAdams not identified a graduate student by name in a blog posting four years ago, Marquette University president Michael Lovell said the school would not be heading to the Wisconsin state Supreme Court to argue that McAdams, a professor, should stay fired.
The case, scheduled for Thursday, centers on whether the Milwaukee Jesuit university was within its rights to fire a tenured political science professor for something he wrote on his personal blog — a post that resulted in insults toward a graduate student instructor at the center of his blog post.
Lovell, the university president, said suspending McAdams was their best course of action after they contend he violated university rules for acting unprofessionally.
“Whatever the outcome of the ruling, we did the right thing,” Lovell said from his office at the school with university lawyer Ralph Weber.
In 2016, McAdams sued the Jesuit university, saying he lost his job for exercising his freedom of speech when he blogged about a student-teacher’s attempt to curtail a discussion in an ethics class about opposition to gay marriage.
But according to the university, McAdams was not fired because of what he wrote on his blog. Instead, the school claims he was fired because he was “doxing” the graduate student by putting the person’s information online.
In 2014, McAdams blogged about a taped conversation that occurred between graduate student-instructor Cheryl Abbate and a student, who took issue with Abbate’s comments during class regarding same-sex marriage.
The student then gave the audio tape to McAdams, who reached out to Abbate for comment and did not receive one. He then blogged about the tape in a post headlined “Marquette Philosophy Instructor: ‘Gay Rights’ Can’t Be Discussed in Class Since Any Disagreement Would Offend Gay Students.”
The following January, McAdams was informed that the administration would withdraw his tenure, and he would be dismissed.
McAdams, a conservative, says he was dismissed for exercising his freedom of speech by criticizing what he considered as a teacher’s decision to shut down a gay marriage discussion by refusing to discuss the matter further in the class.
Lovell disagrees and said it was all about his conduct, “He took a student teacher’s names and put it in his blog along with a link to her contact information, and put it in front of a hostile audience,” he said.
The case has made national news among both conservatives and liberals. The former view universities as a place where their voices and points of view are silenced; the latter believes those conservative perspectives are outside the mainstream and dangerous.
Last year, a Milwaukee County Circuit judge ruled that Marquette was within their legal rights to suspend McAdams.
McAdams sued the university for breach of contract in 2016 after the release of the report.
Thursday’s oral arguments in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court will not include newly elected liberal justice Rebecca Dallet, who does not join the court until late summer.
The court comprises of four conservative justices and two liberal justices, and a decision is expected in June or July.
