Thank you to the Marquette University administration for demonstrating an unwavering commitment to protecting vulnerable members of the Marquette community, including graduate students and women. I hope that other universities look to Marquette for guidance regarding how they might ensure that academia is a safe space for women and what steps should be taken when a faculty member in a position of power abuses that power. I know that because of Marquette's commitment to justice and respect, many women in academia, especially philosophy, have renewed hope and faith that academia will one day be a safe, respectful, and nurturing place for women. Thank you, Marquette, for setting a precedent for other universities that are confronting (or will confront) similar faculty transgressions.
-Cheryl Abbate

Does a "safe space" mean that people of "protected classes" are to be free from all criticism?

Vulnerable members of the Marquette community? Like the undergrad student who was oppressed by your ideology and suppression of speech, which speech is directly in line with the Jesuit theology? What about your faculty transgressions? Are you not responsible for your inappropriate actions?

It appears that you support the philosophy (ideology) of Bernays and Lippman; tell a lie, big enough, loud enough, and often enough, so it becomes accepted. Both Marquette and you will be sadly disappointed when your attempts to stifle speech are rejected and precedent is set whereby universities can once again become places where people can support/oppose ideas and challenge orthodoxy.

Ms. Abbate, you have become that which you supposedly oppose.

Impose blasphemy law and take away Americans' First amendment rights so you can feel safe. No one else matter. This is the result of totalitarian leftists from the non-West running the show.

Unfortunately, it's actually the totalitarian leftists from the West -- who have taken over the universities. If Ms. Abbate gets out of university fantasyland, discovers reality and makes her long remaining journey to adulthood, she will be deeply ashamed.

I give low marks to everyone in this drama. Low marks to the student, because he made a stupid argument about gay marriage and had the audacity to record a conversation with his instructor. Low marks to the grad student, because she silenced the student for having views that are not politically correct and because she shows no awareness that an undergrad is a vulnerable member of the academic ecosystem. Low marks to McAdams, because though he was right to be aggrieved on the student's behalf, he used this to press an anti-liberal agenda he was already obsessed with. And low marks to Dean Holz, because he doesn't seem to understand that there are free speech rights at every level of academia, from the highest levels to the lowest.

Spot on. As one who has extensively researched the JFK assassination I'm rather familiar with McAdams' manner of responding to those with whom he disagrees - more so than I would wish, in fact. I think he's a complete & utter twit, but he is correct on the issue of free speech in this case, as much as it aggrieves me to find myself in accord with anything that issues forth from his mouth. He simply chose his usual path of buffoonery in his response. As to Cheryl Abbate, she's just another P.C. zealot, hardly worth the effort of a response. The worst of the bunch IMHO is Holz, who seemingly couldn't find the courage to stand up for the 1st amendment. disappointing behavior all around.

JK There's nothing stupid about objection to gay marriage. Gays have never been forbidden from entering into heterosexual marriages. Domestic relations laws have protected gays equally. The "stupid" description goes applies to those unwilling to follow the legal processes in place in all fifty states. CA and MA conducted referenda and both rejected gay marriage. There is an amendment process that gay rights radicals know they cannot accomplish. The rule of law is anathema to the totalitarian enemies of the Constitution who seek arbitrary imposition instead of legal process. "Stupid" is an adjective you don't understand or are too dishonest to apply accurately, JK.

Safety schools in nowheresville flyoverland like Marquette seem to believe that mindlessly conforming to what real schools do will make them better. Marquette is still a school that doesn't matter in a place that doesn't matter. It's frustrating to see that non-assimilated Irish Catholic filth are proving right those who correctly pointed out that non-WASPs are incapable of abiding by legal process and individual liberty. Fascism is a catholic phenomenon. It was never politically viable in any predominantly Protestant country - never garnering more than 10% of the popular vote, hence, Ireland's de facto stand with the Axis Power by sending emissaries to Germany as it refused British and American warships berth and provided aid and quarter to catholic fascist pilots.

Dr. Owen Goldin is a signatory against McAdams on the dailynous blog.

He is also a member of the Faculty Hearing Committee - the faculty committee with final authority over faculty terminations.

Dr. Goldin should, under no circumstance, hear evidence in a matter in which he has already made plain his prejudice.

Email Dr. Goldin (owen.goldin@marquette.edu) asking for his resignation from the Faculty Hearing Committee.

His continuance on the committee would be a scandal.

Are students to now be Mentored in the permissiveness of Kangaroo Courts?

I think that it is everyone's hope that this dismissal of Dr. McAdams goes to the Faculty Hearing Committee and, there, is universally rebuked. McAdams is the most important, most powerful professor at Marquette, hands down. This is a despicable Stalinist purge. Ms. Abbate is regrettably being used as a front by P.C.-Stalinists who are, as is well-known, entrenched at Marquette.

If the administration is unable to fire McAdams it will be the most glorious victory for freedom in academe, ever. Because it will come from inside Daniel's lion's den. Yes, Marquette is the most squalid, filth-filled gutter in American academia. Suppliance, correctitude-loving bureaucrats; thought-reformist, complainant, duplicitous faculty; a crappy basketball team;--and Blo's closed, not to mention Glocca Mora and Heg's.

I knew the place was bogus first day I got there and there was no McDonald's in the student union. What a jip. Marquette is rightly a national laughingstock.

I see the "new" logo--which was introduced in 2005--and I think, "That stands for "political correctness."

"We love conformist thinking at Marquette" is what I think when I see that logo, and you should too. "We strive for sterile, antiseptic tameness and obedience, just look at our shiny new smiling-safe president"--another good one.

"Hey, it's your smiling buddy, Stalinist-abiding President Lovell everybody, look at my immaculate record! I rock no boats! Let's go for a jog!"

Purging McAdams a la Josef Stalin (one of Tbilisi's most promising ordinands) is, as Justice Douglas put it, "A long step down the totalitarian path."

I wish I only had a high school diploma.

Marquette '06

The way you write makes me think you only have a high school diploma.

good one

As good as your claim that the most important and powerful professor at Marquette is a guy who's about to be fired?

No not that good

You lost credibility as a commentator the moment you made an assumption of what result everyone is hoping for. I sincerely regret that you graduated from Marquette. Don't dare judge the quality of the prestigious school when you clearly have no quality in rhetoric.

I would love to provide you the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you've left the campus far too long to recognize all the good Marquette is all about. Or perhaps you wish to see what you want to. Either way, your loss.

You should have transferred.

If you can't smell a witch-hunt here, you need to see an ear-nose-throat doc.

University President Michael Lovell has violated university rules and policies, over and over again, in regards to this one incident.

To those of you babbling about free speech, it might be useful to keep in mind that Marquette University is a private institution. The first amendment (the fountainhead of "free speech") prevents the government from interfering with your speech. It does not prevent private entities from doing so. People get confused and lump all kinds of universities together, particularly public with private, when there is a large distinction. Public universities are "the government," and therefore are required to abide by very strict constraints with respect to how much they can govern speech. Private universities are not obliged to do the same. As long as they follow their own policies and employment law, they can revoke his tenure and fire him if they want. A lesson for you wanna be faculty bloviators: get a job at a public university.

David Lovell, a number of issues: Public universities have also been quite willing to institute speech codes and other sorts of abuse of the Constitution. Marquette certainly receives significant amounts of federal money, whether for research grants, campus academic centers, federal medical programs, etc. It is obviously very sketchy to hold that as an organization the school is not required to live up to the standards of federal law - it already has to with regard to EEOC policy.

Employment law, you rightly note, is the key issue. IDK Wisconsin law, but a key notion in labor laws is what contractual relationship exists between employer and employee. It would be very hard to argue that a professor with decades of tenured service from a school that granted him tenure can be fired 'at will'. Marquette needs a cause. That is why the school is trying so hard to advance an obviously pretextual claim that the issue is 'endangerment' of the instructor.

That claim is obviously constructive nonsense: the incident occurred while Cheryl Abbate was acting in the role of instructor, not of student, and the incident grew directly out of her supervisory assertion of authority over the student's speech. The school claims, in effect, that she was an instructor with solely the status of a student. The very notion that her anonymity was violated by McAdams when she was in a public role visible to all is facially ridiculous. The claim that McAdams is derelict because the future actions of unknown persons is just silly. A standard that ephemeral would apply to any faculty or administration member who ever mentioned the name of any student - like a list of football players, a Dean's list or a playbill for a campus production with student actors.

The reaction of the university is obviously an attempt to suppress conservative views on the campus, engage in a vendetta and make an example of how critics will be treated.

As to Ms. Abbate, she appears to be the standard product of what the left will tolerate as university teachers - intolerant and narcissistic to where decency, common sense and basic logic have been beaten out of them. If Cheryl Abbate wants to bring any legitimacy to this mess in her name, she should stand up and say she is being used to justify an ideologically based posse out to hang Prof. McAdams. She should apologize to McAdams for being involved in something so vicious and ugly.

Ms. Abbate, should you happen to read this, understand that before this makes any sense to you, you will have to grow up a great deal and abandon the adolescent narcissism that underlies your behavior, not that it is unusual in universities. I hope you have the strength of character and integrity do so.