"The undisputed facts show that the University breached its contract with Dr. McAdams when it suspended him for engaging in activity protected by the contract's guarantee of academic freedom," said the opinion written by Justice Daniel Kelly....I don't know what Marquette intends to do in the future, but it does have to give McAdams his job back, with back pay.
Justice Ann Bradley [joined by Justice Shirley Abrahamson] wrote a dissenting opinion, saying the court majority erred "in conducting only half of the academic freedom analysis. It fails to recognize, much less analyze, the academic freedom of Marquette as a private, Catholic, Jesuit university," Bradley wrote. "As a result, it dilutes a private educational institution's autonomy to make its own academic decisions in fulfillment of its unique mission.... Apparently, the majority thinks it is in a better position to address concerns of academic freedom than a group of tenured faculty members who live the doctrine every day."...
Marquette issued a statement continuing to defend its actions. "At Marquette University, we are proud that we have taken a stand for our students, our values and our Catholic, Jesuit mission," it said.
July 6, 2018
"Wisconsin Supreme Court sides with Marquette professor John McAdams in free speech case, orders university to reinstate him."
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
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77 comments:
>>At Marquette University, we are proud that we have taken a stand for our students, our values and our Catholic, Jesuit mission
Proud? It goeth after a fall, too, I see.
Off topic, but on the subject of the Sup Ct nominee: Wouldn't it be great if all of the media speculation was subterfuge, and on Monday night, Trump nominates Ted Cruz?
...leading to threats against her.
I was led to believe this was au courant at the moment.
>>Did I commit a sin by not voting for Hillary?
Yes, my son. Your penance is three Our NonGenderAssumings and three Hail Abortions.
"The undisputed facts show that the University breached its contract"
Which was obvious once you read the actual terms. The fact that Marquette tried to defend the indefensible tells you something about the rot in academia.
""It fails to recognize, much less analyze, the academic freedom of Marquette as a private, Catholic, Jesuit university," Bradley wrote."
Except that the point at issue was a provision guaranteeing academic freedom, without undue sanction. to the faculty member.
"than a group of tenured faculty members who live the doctrine every day."
See, progs try to sound serious, jurist-like and all, but then they can't help but give the game away.
""At Marquette University, we are proud that we have taken a stand for our students, our values and our Catholic, Jesuit mission," it said."
Values: f*** contracts, f*** academic freedom. For Christ.
Since I was educated by the Jesuits, I was highly distressed that the administration at Marquette perverted Jesuit ideals in order to quash free speech and conservative thoughts. It was all very high-handed.
The President at Creighton just bashed Trump for getting us out of the Paris deal. He also informed readers of the OWH that 30 years ago the Pope told us we were in a climate crisis. Thirty years ago NASA’s James Hanson said the Westside Highway in NYC would be underwater in 2018. Wrong.
Some bishops went down to TX this week to protest immigration policy.
My question is are Catholics required to vote Democrat? Did I commit a sin by not voting for Hillary? Is it now the case that conservatives are not welcome in the Catholic Church?
Some at the top of the Church are making a grave mistake. And these are the same guys who exhibited near criminal bad judgement in the sex abuse cases.
Ann Bradley on another day: "Apparently, the majority thinks it is in a better position to address concerns of the accused's rights than a group of career police detectives who work with law enforcement every day."
Had the professor been a liberal and the student a conservative, the university never fires the professor- indeed, it is likely the student would have been the one disciplined in some manner. Everyone knows this to be true. That is why the WIScotus decision is the correct one, and that isn't even getting into the contract terms which also support the decision.
More “weaponizing” the 1st Amendment I see. So. Much. Winning.
"than a group of tenured faculty members who live the doctrine every day."
They have confused knowing the doctrine with living it. They need to demonstrate the faculty in question do in fact "live the doctrine."
I don't know what Marquette intends to do in the future, but it does have to give McAdams his job back, with back pay.
Pay him lots of money to go away.
I am shocked that the two librul judges would like to squash the conservative plaintiff. Written agreements and constitutions mean nothing to libruls.
Isn't this just an employment law case?
I thought Abrahamson was dead or retired.
What an embarrassment. Good she's leaving in 2019. Suing to remain Chief Justice and then getting involved in that incredibly stupid "Battle of the Judges"
The professor looks conservative. Fat and hideous looking
"Apparently, the majority thinks it is in a better position to address concerns of academic freedom than a group of tenured faculty members who live the doctrine every day."
Since that's the actual purpose of having courts. The majority also likely thinks it is in a better position to address concerns of freedom than a group of citizens who live the doctrine every day.
Courts, according to the minority, can't rule on anything if the defendants are engaged in regular interaction with the topic at hand. That's a very surprising statement on maximizing judicial restraint!
Marquette may be a Jesuit school, but their administration seems to be Bourbon.
Marquette University benefits from federal grant monies directly, and remains a going concern due in no small part to its students receiving federal student aid. "[P]rivate, Catholic, Jesuit university" my ass.
The process is the punishment. This guy had to fight for three years to regain his tenured position because he had the temerity to question the Extremely Perfect Outrage of some self-important harpy? Three years living on savings or scraps hoping for a win that would put him back to status quo ante --an impossibility? He won't ever get those years back. The fattest check and the most effusive Obama-level apology by the school won't begin to compensate him.
More importantly, every other would-be free-speaker is getting the message: cross these Torquemadas at your peril.
Free speech is losing the war. The only good outcome here would have been a court taking jurisdiction over the school --a moral receivership-- to supervise every single policy and action that it takes to chill free speech. A decade or two of that might help.
The majority opinion is quite scathing about the dissent.
Looks like the judges still don't like each other.
Great news. Somehow I don't imagine academics are cheering for this decision.
" It fails to recognize, much less analyze, the academic freedom of Marquette as a private, Catholic, Jesuit university," Bradley wrote."
Well, yes; this was a breach of contract, not a First Amendment suit.
" It fails to recognize, much less analyze, the academic freedom of Marquette as a private, Catholic, Jesuit university," Bradley wrote."
So this learned Jurist says "Contracts" don't matter when it comes to "Private" institutions. Could've fooled me, I tried that once in my business, lost and had to pay for it.
Funny, how silent this article is about "damages" in this lawsuit. I hope it will be huge! That's the only kind of pain, Liberals, PC nuts, and bureaucrats react to.
The only good outcome here would have been a court taking jurisdiction over the school
Courts will never play along. We need to eliminate the campus activists (faculty and administrators).
Michael Lovell is the lay president at Marquette and has been so since 2014. He is entirely responsible for this breach of contract case. And what about general counsel? A clear loser and should have been settled long ago. The faculty got the message to ahut up long ago if they weren’t following the party line. The Warriors will be out $2m in cash, easy, and untold alum goodwill when this is over? I know the Board backed Lovell publically but I find it hard to believe it was unanimous.
The Board should sack Lovell.
From the opinion:
"The problem with odes, however, is that their poetry so often comes at the expense of precision."
I would like to hear the Wisconsin Supreme Court's opinion of "Baby, You Can Drive My Car."
The Jesuits I knew would have had a poor opinion of the leadership of Marquette.
"It fails to recognize, much less analyze, the academic freedom of Marquette as a private, Catholic, Jesuit university..."
Lol.
This is all so Clown World, on so many levels.
Love to have a time machine to go back 50-100 years and ask the then-presiding officials of this "Catholic, Jesuit university" to examine and comment on the particulars of this case.
I'd bet good money that Marquette seeks cert to SCOTUS.
There goes another $250k-$500k.
Outside counsel is only too happy to cash the checks of a rich and stupid client.
I wonder what Marquette alums think about this.
"a group of tenured faculty members who live the doctrine every day"
Yes, but does the doctrine live within them? Loudly?
The ruling was in error. The proper way to fix this would include a stipulation that the back pay McAdams is owed should come out the pocket of the university president. Limousine Progressives may not understand rights and obligations and contracts, but they do understand it when they have to pay to clean up their own mess.
Andrew said...
Off topic, but on the subject of the Sup Ct nominee: Wouldn't it be great if all of the media speculation was subterfuge, and on Monday night, Trump nominates Ted Cruz?
In the middle of a campaign for Cruz's senate seat? With a credible (if underdog) Democratic nominee?
Justice Ann Bradley [joined by Justice Shirley Abrahamson
Nice to know those two, vile creatures are still in the minority. Wisconsin seriously dodged a bullet back in 2012 or '13 when that entire mess was going down.
Marquette University signed a contract.
Period.
It is a private institution and it signed a clear contract with an in Thank goodness all but 2 of the justices are not fucking idiots.
Those 2 justices chose to say an institution can abrogate a contract in service of leftist causes.
Unexpectedly.
Andrew said...
Off topic, but on the subject of the Sup Ct nominee: Wouldn't it be great if all of the media speculation was subterfuge, and on Monday night, Trump nominates Ted Cruz?
You could get all of those benefits with Mike Lee.
Cruz picked the wrong year to be up for re-election.
From the opinion:
"Nor do blogging faculty members have a general obligation to ensure every statement they make in a post is accurate."
Well, good.
I was going to relate this to the Kathy Griffin review but I don't feel like having my head chopped off.
A good start. Wait until the court comes down in favor of the Asians vs. Harvard! As I have said many times I look forward to the panic then. Of course Harvard will be willing to spend others' money to take the case as high as possible.
@Achilles, yes, Mike Lee would do nicely. I'm happy for Trump to choose one of the likely nominees (Kavanaugh, etc.). But if Trump chose Lee or Cruz, it would make the Left dial it up past 11, and that would be mighty fun to watch.
Blogger Titus ejaculates...The professor looks conservative. Fat and hideous looking
--
He's Adonis compared to Michael Moore.
I hope Adams has thick enough skin to go back there and rub their noses in this.
"I'm baaaaack!"
Camera coverage, please.
Big Mike:
Firing Lovell would have the same result.
But Marquette is proud not to employ conservative professors and admit anyone but liberal students. Big mistake.
Fr. John Schlegel, S.J. was president at USF and Creighon. He always said, "We don't teach you what to think. We teach you how to think." That's the Jesuit ideal. The Warriors fail at it.
Althouse, this is one of those occasions on which I wish you'd write a thousand words of your own opinion and analysis with this post. I expect that I'd be in agreement your analysis and any conclusion you might reach. But maybe not, and that would be the fun part.
(Your analysis, and the process, is what I'd find most interesting.)
This case might be the first time I've ever found myself agreeing with anything written by Ann Walsh Bradley or Shirley Abrahamson. They have a point. It is undoubtedly an insincere point, which would have been reversed if the politics of the situation had been reversed.
So, let's imagine a classroom at Notre Dame (... or Marquette, for that matter!) where a professor was blogging that it was "fascism" to force any woman to carry a pregnancy to term when she wished to get an abortion. And the university said, "We understand you have a right to free speech, but we have an essential religious mission, and your speech is incompatible with that mission. We are part of the organized Roman Catholic church and part of our credo is that we are avowedly and officially pro-life. We don't think that the government can force us to pay for university employees' abortions, and we don't accept pro-"choice" arguments.
[Of course, even the 'most Catholic' of major universities are now mostly liberal, like most other major universities, and such a thing would never happen in practice, but you get the principle...]
In that instance, would the liberals on the Wisconsin Supreme Court agree that the [private, religiously-affiliated] university had the right to impose discipline including termination on the faculty speaker?
And would conservatives be hailing the rights of a liberal professor to speak out forcibly against a conservative university administration? What if a Hillsdale prof wanted to blog about the merits of nationalized health care and socialism?
It is the clash of the individual's speech rights, versus the university's religious-identity rights or even its ideological beliefs.
I hope someday you'll come back to this case to analyze it, Althouse.
btw: YIKES! Justice Rebecca Bradley's concurrence footnotes (fn. 3) "On Liberty," by John Stuart Mills. Maybe "Mills" is Hayley Mills' little-remembered great great great great grandfather.
Khesanh 0802 said...
A good start. Wait until the court comes down in favor of the Asians vs. Harvard!
It won't make much difference. If they lose they will discriminate against Asians in a different and slightly stupider way while anti-white discrimination will remain unchanged.
Chuck,
The differences are apparent. In the first place, the professor was calling out a grad student, not making a point of his own against abortion (or, in the actual case, gay marriage). In the second place, what she said was that there's no point talking about it any more because we're all in agreement, which -- transparently -- we aren't.
Notre Dame, or any other genuinely Catholic university, if there still are some such, is within its rights to say that some things are, from its perspective, beyond dispute. What it is not entitled to say is that there literally are no people disputing them, that the argument is over. You can say that the solution to unwed pregnancy isn't to tear the growing baby limb from limb inside the womb; you can say that the sexes are teleologically designed to be directed towards one another, and that thinking otherwise is "intrinsically disordered." You can argue both positions consistently and coherently, as Catholics have been doing for literal millennia before either surgical abortion or gay marriage was an actual "thing." What you can't do is assert that no one disagrees with you.
McAdams' blog post was inoffensive criticism of some leftist professor's actions. Certainly, not worthy of termination.
Rick,
True enough. I think the pro-AA forces are sufficiently cynical that they're assuming that eventually the white folks will twig that the Black and Latino and NA populations are never, ever going down, so it's Asians or them for the remainder of the pie.
I've never heard of a Supreme Court taking a case "on bypass from the Court of Appeals". Having Googled it, I now understand that either the SC can reach down to a district court and grab a case or a party to a case can petition the SC to grab it directly. In this case it is the latter.
But my question is: What were the considerations for the Wisconsin SC to accept this case without it going through the normal appeals process, on petition from McAdams?
(Just curious.)
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...
Chuck,
The differences are apparent. In the first place, the professor was calling out a grad student, not making a point of his own against abortion (or, in the actual case, gay marriage). In the second place, what she said was that there's no point talking about it any more because we're all in agreement, which -- transparently -- we aren't.
I get that, and I think that you have fairly characterized things...
Notre Dame, or any other genuinely Catholic university, if there still are some such, is within its rights to say that some things are, from its perspective, beyond dispute. What it is not entitled to say is that there literally are no people disputing them, that the argument is over. You can say that the solution to unwed pregnancy isn't to tear the growing baby limb from limb inside the womb; you can say that the sexes are teleologically designed to be directed towards one another, and that thinking otherwise is "intrinsically disordered." You can argue both positions consistently and coherently, as Catholics have been doing for literal millennia before either surgical abortion or gay marriage was an actual "thing." What you can't do is assert that no one disagrees with you.
Right. Mine was not a perfect comparison, procedurally, to the situation in Prof. McAdams' case. What I was trying to do, was to reverse the politics in the most realistic way I could imagine.
You make some very fair points about the McAdams case. I am certainly not arguing pro- or anti-Catholicism, or pro- or anti-Marquette. What I am saying is that it is not as easy a case as one might think at first blush. Of course all of the Fox News Channel viewers are eager for any story which has a liberal/progressivist university administration as the villain and ultimately as the butt of the joke.
Michelle, if I might ask a question of you; would you agree that as an intellectual exercise, Justice Scalia would have loved to take on this case? And do you have a clear feeling how he might have ruled?
David Balkin:
I suspect that WI is like NE. The Supreme Court can pick any case off the Court of Appeals docket and just hear it.
Back in the old days (80's), the Nebraska Supreme Court was the one and only appellate court. There was no intermediate Court of Appeals.
1. Justice Bradley ignored the gross pro-homosexuality bias of so many tenured faculty (Especially outside of STEP as makes MU's action too much like having a committee of Nazis rule on the contract between a Rabbi and his congregation).
2. The person Professor McAdams commented on was acting in her (Its?) role as an instructor and NOT as a graduate student.
3. Marquette University is a Jesuit university and NOT a Catholic School (eg Franciscan University of Pennsylvania).
James Pawlak
Marquette is Catholic and Jesuit; just poorly managed by unaccountable liberals who want no dissent.
"Those 2 justices chose to say an institution can abrogate a contract in service of leftist causes."
Precedent in this case would be GM bond holders. Until that happened President Obama still had my support. It was the first time in my life I would have supported the ousting of POTUS.
I would also bet good money that expensive outside counsel told Lovell that they would lose the breach of contract case and so they had to cook up this “Catholic values” crap in order to circumvent judicial review. I also imagine that there is plenty of discussion between attorney and client to just bleed and wear down McAdams for years and hope he would quit, die or go bankrupt.
What a sorry case. Marquette is an embarrassment.
One of Marquette’s official values,
“Nurture an inclusive, diverse community that fosters new opportunities, partnerships, collaboration and vigorous yet respectful debate.”
But not too diverse or too vigorous.
@Rick I guess what I am looking forward to is the ridiculous posturing that will take place to do as you describe.
“Academic freedom must include responsibility. Unfortunately, Marquette can’t undo the significant harm that he caused to the former student teacher’s academic career. We must, however, ensure that this doesn’t happen to another student. Marquette will continue to uphold its values and protect its students.”
What harm? She moved to the University of Colorado. Big upgrade.
And this was a grad student who taught.
And what was Marquette protecting? The right of a teacher to stop debate on same-sex marriage?
This decision was based on contract, not 1A. A church-affiliated university could certainly provide in its employment contracts that faculty members have academic freedom, but only insofar as they do not disagree with the fundamental teachings of the church, as determined by the university. If this U had done that, then the prof. would presumably have lost. But that wasn't this case.
The way things used to work in the Detroit auto industry, and maybe still do, was that if managers got really, really tired of working with a particular union shop steward, they would fire him.
The managers knew it would be found to be unlawful retaliation and that in two or three years the guy they fired would be reinstated with back pay, but sometimes it was considered worth it not to have to have to deal with the particular guy for a few years.
The UAW paid the guy while his case worked its way through the system and, when the guy was reinstated, he was expected to throw an epic no-expense-spared party to celebrate.
Interesting to see the conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court play the role of a labor-friendly National Labor Relations Board and its liberal members go over to the company side.
Godfather:
Being in favor of same-sex marriage is not a fundamental teaching of the Catholic Church.
Creighton fired its Athletic Director over the scandal involving the academic progress of former basketball player Kevin Ross and the subsequent lawsuit. The matter hurt Creighton for years.
Marquette should fire Lovell. Marquette will pay for years. Alum donations will decline. Why would a conservative fund an overtly liberal organization that is hostile to open debate?
@ David Begley: "Being in favor of same-sex marriage is not a fundamental teaching of the Catholic Church."
I didn't say it was. I was making the point that the terms of the contract could have allowed the U to do what it did, but they didn't.
Still, I'm glad for your comment. I'm not a Roman Catholic, so I'm not up on all the recent changes in church doctrine, but what I see in the media about the new new Pope makes me wonder.
Places like Marquette are why the Church needs to reinstate the Inquisition.
Both individuals and institutions have been investigated for heresy, and goodness knows that modern Catholic educational institutions are full of that.
In the end the choice will be to be expelled from the Church, as an organ and instrument thereof, and should be regarded as a strictly unaffiliated private school, or to be purged, of personnel, departments, courses of study. I don't think they can be tolerated much longer, as they are a path of transmission of every sort of poison.
This tolerance is going to be fatal.
"It fails to recognize, much less analyze, the academic freedom of Marquette as a private, Catholic, Jesuit university..."
You guys are getting the facts wrong. The point was that tenured professor McAdams, a Catholic, defended the right of a Catholic student to argue for the Catholic teaching on marriage in a class at this "Catholic" university - and was fired for that. Now he has been reinstated because under the secular law of his contract he cannot be fired for defending the Catholic teaching on marriage at Marquette, a Catholic university. And the prog justices are saying this decision is wrong because this Catholic institution, Marquette, should be able to order a Catholic professor to be fired for speaking up in a blog on behalf of a Catholic student who spoke up on behalf of the Catholic view on marriage at a Marquette class. Marquette should be able to fire those who defend the Catholic position because Marquette is a Catholic institution, not a secular university. It's so distorted that the facts are unbelievable. If dogma is inside you, i.e., you believe, then you can have very strange experiences in Catholic zone. Suffice to say that there are those who are RCINO (Roman Catholic In Name Only) such as the President of Marquette and they work to fire and silence believers. They do this because they fear for Federal funding and because RCINO's hate Catholics more than Bill Kristol hates Trump supporters. As a prolifer I've been a RCINO target and I'd rather face Antifa.
Would only be in favor of the restoration of the Holy Office if e.g. Buwaya were prefect; I'd dread seeing who the Roman Pontiff presently reigning might appoint, which would not have been the case in any preceding reign during my lifetime.
>>Nurture an inclusive, diverse community that fosters new opportunities, partnerships, collaboration and vigorous yet respectful debate.”
Yes! At Marquette, you are invited to have a vigorous debate about gay marriage:
Is it the best thing ever, OR
Is it just really really wonderful?
Every student, faculty, and staff member is free to choose whichever of those two sides they prefer.
I've posted this comment before, but it just keeps being on point when discussing Universities:
Diversity = No other opinions allowed
Inclusion = Removal from campus
"This tolerance is going to be fatal."
No, the Church and this Pope are going off the deep end and I have no idea what the final toll will be.
The western Death Wish seems to be infecting the Church in the west,
Peter Htchens already explained much of this.
Beyond the Fringe, Forty Years On and TW3 created a tradition of ‘anti-establishment’ comedy which continued long after its roots were forgotten. There may still have been an ‘establishment ‘of snobbery, church, monarchy, clubland and old-school-tie links in 1961.There was no such thing ten years later, but it suited the comics and all reformers to pretend that there was and to continue to attack this mythical thing. After all, if there were no snobbery, no crusty old aristocrats and cobwebbed judges, what was the moral justification for all this change, change which benefited the reformers personally by making them rich, famous and influential?
* * * * * * *
It also made the middle class, especially the educated and well-off middle class, despise themselves and feel a sort of shame for their supposedly elitist prejudices, based upon injustice and undermined by their failure to defend the nation from its enemies in the era of appeasement. Thanks to this, in another paradox, they have often felt unable to defend things within Britain which they value and which help to keep them in existence, from the grammar schools to good manners. They are ashamed of being higher up the scale, though for most middle-class people this is more a matter of merit than birth, and nothing to be ashamed of at all.<
It just came to the US a few years later.
We don't have Rotherham yet but we will if we don't reverse course.
Michael K: "...we will have Rotherham...". Not to worry. That is grooming. Grooming isn't rape-rape.
"a group of tenured faculty members who live the doctrine every day"
Don't make me laugh too hard. Academic freedom is in a coma or rather kept like a mummified crocodile in a curio cabinet. Its main purpose was to permit left-wing infiltration of academic institutions. Nowadays it's mainly a reason for self-congratulatory anniversary celebrations; no present-day relevance, just a historical moment, like the suffragettes or the temperance movement. "Our ancestors fought hard for us to be where we are today, let's not let their conquests slip from our grasp". Berkeley not long ago celebrated 50 years since the birth of the "Free Speech Movement". The initials FSM are now more likely to stand for the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The only (self-proclaimed) academic experts in this doctrine are left-wing and they'll be the first to assure us that it's just fine to punch a Nazi every once in a while. Hate speech is not free speech. There are also "trauma-informed responses to oppression". The doctrine is in good hands.
Wildswan said “You guys are getting the facts wrong. The point was that tenured professor McAdams, a Catholic, defended the right of a Catholic student to argue for the Catholic...”
EXACTLY!.
What a bizarre world when the student speaks in favor of a traditional Catholic viewpoint AT A CATHOLIC INSTITUTION is silenced and the Professor who calls out the silencer is sanctioned.
And to top it all off the Professor has to go to the secular court to seek justice.
Suppose one of you wants to bring a charge against another believer. Should you take it to ungodly people to be judged? Why not take it to the Lord’s people? 2 Or don’t you know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? Since this is true, aren’t you able to judge small cases? 3 Don’t you know that we will judge angels? Then we should be able to judge the things of this life even more! 4 So suppose you disagree with one another in matters like this. Who do you ask to decide which of you is right? Do you ask people who live in a way the church disapproves of? Of course not! 5 I say this to shame you. Is it possible that no one among you is wise enough to judge matters between believers? 6 Instead, one believer goes to court against another. And this happens in front of unbelievers!
1 Corinthians 6
"At Marquette University, we are proud that we have taken a stand for our students, our values and our Catholic, Jesuit mission," it said."
So they are "proud" that a TA said she would forbid anyone in her section to agree with Catholic orthodoxy on homosexuality?
They consider that part of their "Catholic" mission?
The Catholic Church needs an actually Catholic Pope, and some actually Catholic bishops
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