Marquette Buys Ad to Attack McAdams

Marquette University has been waging war against Political Science Professor John McAdams for years.

Those attempting to silence McAdams, and conservative and Catholic views in general on campus, used a blog post written by McAdams to bring the tensions to the breaking point.

On his Marquette Warrior blog, McAdams documented some troubling happenings that occurred in a Marquette University classroom in November 2014, "Marquette Philosophy Instructor: 'Gay Rights' Can't Be Discussed in Class Since Any Disagreement Would Offend Gay Students."

The instructor, Cheryl Abbate, was a doctoral student in the philosophy department at Marquette, teaching "Theory of Ethics." It must be understood that Abbate taught the class. She served in the role of teacher. As the teacher, Abbate was in a position of authority. She exploited that position to bully one of her undergraduate students.

Since December 2014, McAdams has been severely punished by Marquette, resulting in a legal battle that will be decided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

In short, it's a mess. Marquette has been dealing with the public relations nightmare that comes with being recognized as one of the greatest threats to free speech on campus in the country.

Under Marquette President Michael Lovell, the university radically lurched to the Left, destroying free speech on campus in the process. Lovell permitted the stifling of speech that gives voice to Catholic teaching, muzzling a student, and attempted to fire McAdams for merely outlining the story of an instructor's undeniably inappropriate behavior in the classroom.

In the face of persistent negative national attention, Marquette has refused to settle the McAdams matter in a reasonable fashion. In fact, the university has gone to rather bizarre lengths to destroy McAdams.

Marquette actually bought an ad on Google to get its propaganda to those searching "John McAdams Marquette."


Screenshot from Marquette Warrior

John McAdams writes:

Marquette, knowing they have been taking a public relations beating over their attempt to fire this blogger, has bought a Google ad to point people to their biased and selective page of “resources” on our case.

We do not know how much they are paying per “click through,” but the top position in a Google search does not come cheap.

The page promoted by Marquette's ad purports to relay the "facts" on McAdams v. Marquette. It's an official university page.

Here is a flat-out false assertion found on the page:

MYTH: This court case is about academic freedom and freedom of speech.

FACT: Putting a student teacher’s name and contact information on the internet before a hostile audience, commonly referred to as doxing, is not an exercise of academic freedom or protected speech. Had he written the exact same post without that information, he would not have been disciplined.

This case is about John McAdams’ reckless and harmful behavior toward a student teacher at Marquette University, which caused her irreparable harm.

This type of conduct, publishing a student teacher's name and contact information on the internet before a hostile audience, commonly referred to as doxing, violates a professor’s contract and duties to Marquette students and colleagues.

John McAdams crossed the line when he put a student teacher’s name and contact information on the internet subjecting her to ruthless, hateful attacks.

Academic freedom and freedom of speech are essential tenets of our campus community. John McAdams has enjoyed these essential freedoms for 40 years at Marquette, including publishing more than 3,000 blogs and internet postings on a variety of topics. A circuit court judge ruled that academic freedom does not mean that a professor can harass, threaten or intimidate a student.

McAdams did not dox Abbate.

Marquette is lying about that. There's no other way to put it.

"Facts"?

No.

As I've been doing since 2014, I strongly encourage Marquette donors to withhold their support from the university.

Of course, if you think censorship on campus, stifling academic freedom, and assaulting Marquette's Catholic identity are appropriate, then get out that checkbook.