Marquette U moves to fire prof who blogged about teaching assistant stifling gay marriage debate
Two articles, same subject:
Article 1
February 5, 2015
By Scott Jaschik
A controversial professor on Wednesday revealed that Marquette University is trying to revoke his tenure and fire him for statements he made about a graduate instructor, with her name, on his blog.
The university says his behavior was unprofessional and that he misled the public about what happened in a dispute between the graduate instructor and an undergraduate student. The professor, John McAdams, says he is being punished for his free speech. He also maintains that Marquette shouldn't be attacking him, given that he is defending an undergraduate's views against gay marriage that are consistent with Roman Catholic teachings. (Marquette is a Jesuit university.)
The dispute over McAdams attracted national attention even before Marquette moved to fire him, with some academics backing the graduate student and others McAdams.
In November, McAdams, an associate professor of political science, wrote a blog post accusing a teaching assistant in philosophy of shutting down a classroom conversation on gay marriage based on her own political beliefs. His account was based on a recording secretly made by a disgruntled student who wished that the instructor, Cheryl Abbate, had spent more time in class one day on the topic of gay marriage, which the student opposed. McAdams said Abbate, in not allowing a prolonged conversation about gay marriage, was “using a tactic typical among liberals,” in which opinions they disagree with “are not merely wrong, and are not to be argued against on their merits, but are deemed ‘offensive’ and need to be shut up.”
Abbate said McAdams had distorted her actions -- and that she wasn't trying to shut down an argument she disagreed with, but simply had wanted to keep a focus on an in-class conversation about the philosopher John Rawls’s equal liberty principle. But conservative blogs spread McAdams's take on the situation -- and she found herself receiving a flood of hateful e-mail messages, some of them threatening.
McAdams on Wednesday posted a letter he received from his dean, Richard C. Holz, in which Holz told McAdams the university was starting the firing process.
more
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/05/marquette-moves-fire-controversial-faculty-blogger
Article 2:
Dean Richard C. Holz — in the letter he sent to McAdams informing him of the proceedings against him — wrote that as a result of having her name attached to McAdams’ post, Abbate “received a series of hate-filled and despicable e-mails, including one suggesting that she had committed ‘treason and sedition’ and as a result faced penalties such as ‘drawing, hanging, beheading, and quartering.”
“Another note, delivered to her campus mailbox, told the student, ‘You must undo the terrible wrong committed when you were born. Your mother failed to make the right choice. You must abort yourself for the glory of inclusiveness and tolerance.’ Accordingly, and understandably, the student feared for her personal safety, and we posted a Public Safety Officer outside her classroom,” Holz wrote.
“In addition, as a result of your conduct and its consequences, Ms. Cheryl Abbate now has withdrawn from our graduate program and moved to another university to continue her academic career.”
In that letter, the university insisted that firing would not violate the principals of academic freedom, because the actions being taken against McAdams related to repeated professional misconduct, not freedom of expression.
more
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/marquette-u-moves-to-fire-prof-who-blogged-about-teaching-assistant-stifling-gay-marriage-debate/
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