A tenured Marquette University political science professor has been officially banned from campus property and suspended from teaching thanks to his blog post that criticized a liberal colleague’s refusal to allow a conservative student to debate the topic of gay marriage in her classroom.
The suspended professor, John McAdams, received an email Tuesday from Richard Holz, the dean of the Wisconsin school, informing him of his suspension:
The university is continuing to review your conduct and during this period–and until further notice–you are relieved of all teaching duties and all other faculty activities, including, but not limited to, advising, committee work, faculty meetings and any activity that would involve your interaction with Marquette students, faculty and staff. Should any academic appeals arise from Fall 2014 semester, however, you are expected to fulfill your obligations in that specific matter.
Your salary and benefits will continue at their current level during this time.
You are to remain off campus during this time, and should you need to come to campus, you are to contact me in writing beforehand to explain the purpose of your visit, to obtain my consent and to make appropriate arrangements for that visit. I am enclosing with this letter Marquette’s harassment policy, its guiding values statement, the University mission statement, and sections from the Faculty Handbook, which outline faculty rights and responsibilities; these documents will inform our review of your conduct.
Sincerely,
Richard C. Holz, Ph.D. Dean
The trouble started back in November when McAdams wrote about an incident that had happened in a philosophy class that was recounted to him by a student. McAdams runs a blog, called the Marquette Warrior, and it is intended to provide “an independent, rather skeptical view” of things that happen at the university.
The student teacher,Cheryl Abbate, of this philosophy class was teaching a lesson on applying philosophical text to current controversial political topics.
“She listed some issues on the board, and came to ‘gay rights.’ She then airily said that, ‘everybody agrees on this, and there is no need to discuss it,'” McAdams wrote on his blog.
“The student, a conservative who disagrees with some of the gay lobby’s notions of “gay rights” (such as gay marriage) approached her after class and told her he thought the issue deserved to be discussed. Indeed, he told Abbate that if she dismisses an entire argument because of her personal views, that sets a terrible precedent for the class.”
The student was told that “some opinions are not appropriate” and the teacher said this student’s opinions might be “offensive” to gay students in the class.
“She went on, ‘In this class, homophobic comments, racist comments, will not be tolerated.’ She then invited the student to drop the class,” he wrote, adding that the student did end up doing that.
McAdams went on to criticize the teacher for silencing the debate.
“Abbate, of course, was just using a tactic typical among liberals now. Opinions with which they disagree are not merely wrong, and are not to be argued against on their merits, but are deemed “offensive” and need to be shut up,” he wrote.
McAdams said he was never given an official reason for being suspended, but since the “absurdly vague” harassment policy was included in that email, he has assumed this is the reason he is “being treated like a potential terrorist.
Right Wisconsin published a response by McAdams to the suspension Wednesday.
The decision to ban the professor over the supposed harassment charge “is strange because, the only thing I’ve ever done that threatens people at Marquette is blogging,” he said.
“I can do that at home.”
