Professor John McAdams Faces Firing for Complaining About Ideological Intolerance

People snigger when you remind them that universities were once considered free marketplaces of ideas. Now that the Left has achieved hegemony in academia, they are the polar opposite of free. The persecution of thought criminal John McAdams at Marquette University is illustrative:

In November 2014 an undergraduate approached philosophy instructor and PhD candidate Cheryl Abbate, after a class on John Rawls’ theory of equal liberty. The student said he objected to her suggestions during the class that same-sex marriage isn’t open for debate and that “everyone agrees on this.”

In past times, someone pursuing a PhD in philosophy would probably respect the concept of open debate, rather than tyrannically shutting it down with the “everyone agrees so shut up” club so familiar from its overuse to prop up the global warming hoax. But not these days.

Unknown to Ms. Abbate, the student recorded the exchange on his cell phone. During the conversation, she told him “there are some opinions that are not appropriate, that are harmful, such as racist opinions, sexist opinions” and if someone in the class was homosexual, “don’t you think that that would be offensive to them if you were to raise your hand and challenge this?”

What if someone in the class is Christian? Marquette was founded as a Catholic University, after all.

Enter the thought criminal, one of the last countermoonbats who has not been drummed out of academia:

When the student replied that he has a right to argue his opinion, Ms. Abbate responded that “you can have whatever opinions you want but I can tell you right now, in this class homophobic comments, racist comments and sexist comments will not be tolerated. If you don’t like that you are more than free to drop this class.” The student reported the exchange to Marquette professor John McAdams, who teaches political science. Mr. McAdams also writes a blog called the Marquette Warrior, which often criticizes the Milwaukee school for failing to act in accordance with its Catholic mission.

Mr. McAdams wrote on his blog that Ms. Abbate was “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.”

The blog post received sufficient circulation as to create some blowback for Ms. Abbate in the form of nasty emails. She is no longer at Marquette.

But now Marquette is going after Mr. McAdams. In December 2014, the school sent him a letter suspending his teaching duties and banning him from campus while it reviewed his “conduct” related to the blog post. “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,” Dean Richard Holz wrote.

Marquette President Michael Lovell told the tenured professor that he would be suspended without pay and would not be reinstated unless he admitted his conduct was “reckless” and apologized for the unpleasant emails Ms. Abbate received.

So much for the academic freedom that is guaranteed by section 306.03 of Marquette’s Faculty Handbook, which states that “in no case” can a professor be dismissed “to impair the full and free enjoyment of legitimate personal or academic freedoms of thought, doctrine, discourse, association, advocacy, or action.” That verbiage is only for defending leftists.

Professor McAdams is holding firm:

McAdams told Mr. Lovell this week that he won’t participate in the “compelled speech” demanded by the university by April 14 in exchange for reinstatement.

There are still a few Americans left in this country. But they won’t last long in academia.

Marquette-professor-John-McAdams
McAdams fights the power, just like liberal conformists pretend to do.

On a tip from Varla. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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