The Wisconsin Supreme Court sided with John McAdams from Marquette University on Friday, after McAdams was terminated in 2016 due to a blog post regarding a fellow instructor.
The 120-page ruling states that McAdams’ firing was a violation of contract guaranteeing academic freedom, but the Wisconsin’s Supreme Court was divided. The majority asserted that faculty practiced “unacceptable bias” in regards to McAdams. Dissenters felt the ruling was “far reaching” and didn’t “protect McAdams from discipline.”
McAdams’ blog post from 2014 expressed that a fellow instructor had suppressed a discussion that addressed the disapproval to gay marriage at a Catholic school. He outlined an exchange between a student and the graduate student instructor, which was secretly recorded. McAdams wrote, at the time, that the exchange was an example of liberals silencing rhetoric they deem offensive.
Marquette University claimed that McAdams was disciplined for sharing the instructor’s contact information, not his viewpoint. After being suspended, McAdams was offered his position back, but only if he wrote a letter of apology. McAdams refused and instead sued.
“Administrators cannot simply decide that they do not like the results of certain faculty speech, and then work backwards to find a justification for firing them,” Ari Cohn of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, said in a statement. “The court’s decision recognized that allowing a university to do so is incompatible with any meaningful understanding of academic freedom. Colleges and universities across the country that are facing calls to discipline faculty members for their online speech should pay attention to today’s decision.”
McAdams’ persistence in the media and in the courts has commanded attention on the growing suppression of open and free debate on difficult subjects.
Free speech has been repeatedly violated by academic administrations. Professor Bret Weinstein of Evergreen State College faced similar backlash when he criticized his fellow faculty for oppressing speech and ideas on campus. His case concluded with a settlement in his favor.
This court ruling shows a growing trend: Tactics of coercion and acquiescence in academia will become less tolerated.
