Embattled professor John McAdams files suit against Marquette University

MILWAUKEE -- Marquette University Professor John McAdams and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty filed suit in Milwaukee County Circuit Court on Monday morning, May 2nd against Marquette University. The lawsuit seeks McAdams' reinstatement as professor, and unspecified damages.

McAdams is suspended without pay from MU for blogging about a graduate teaching assistant who was secretly recorded by one of her students. The suit alleges the university illegally suspended McAdams in fall 2014 and officials made the decision to terminate his tenure and fire him from Marquette.

McAdams was initially suspended by Marquette with pay in January of 2015. In March, Marquette suspended him without pay for the rest of 2016. MU President Michael Lovell added the condition that McAdams write a letter to the school, accepting responsibility for his actions, a demand McAdams quickly rejected.

CLICK HERE to view the lawsuit

McAdams tells FOX6 he will not accept any resolution that involves any level of punishment for him, because that, he says, would be an affront to "academic freedom." In hindsight, he says if he could go back, he would not name the instructor in his blog, but he maintains he had every right to do so.

"This is a sad day, but an important one," Rick Esenberg, the founder and president and general counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty said.

Esenberg earned his law degree from Marquette, and is now using it to sue the university on McAdams' behalf.

"This has wasted a year-and-a-half of my life," McAdams said.

The political firestorm started in the fall of 2014 in an ethics class.  The topic?  John Rawls' principle of equal liberty.  The instructor had asked students to come prepared with ideas.

"She basically said let's name social issues in today's political environment and then we can go ahead and apply this principle to these social issues," said "Matt," then a Marquette sophomore.

One by one, the instructor recorded possible topics for debate, but when all of the students were finished, she wiped one of them off the list -- gay marriage.

"She said, 'oh, well we all agree to this one,' and erased it," Matt said. "That was the only one she erased, and I did take issue with that."

Matt is a conservative Christian, College Republican. The instructor, a self-described "vegan feminist."

"I just wanted to simply ask her, you know, why did you let your personal views get in the way of that?" Matt said.

He waited until after class to approach the instructor -- a conversation he secretly recorded with his cell phone.

Listen here:



"I have to say I'm very disappointed in you," Matt said.

"Okay? For what reason?" the instructor replied.

"When we were talking today and you were kind -- when we were talking about gay marriage -- you said, 'Well, obviously this one's .' I'm going to be completely honest with you, I don't agree with gay marriage."

The instructor then engages in a brief debate with Matt about the merits of gay adoption, before Matt interjects.

Listen here:

Later in the conversation:

When the instructor finally noticed Matt was recording the conversation, she ended it. He then left the room, vowing to play the recording for her superiors.

He complained to an administrator of Arts & Sciences, who referred him to the chair of the philosophy department, Dr. Nancy Snow. Matt says he was unaware at the time that Snow is a lesbian.

"I realized that I'd confronted an openly gay lesbian about a gay rights issue, which I felt very stupid about," Matt said.

Snow later referred to him in a colleague's voicemail as an "insolent little twerp," a comment she did not dispute when contacted by the FOX6 Investigators. In fact, she declined to comment at all. Snow is now at the University of Oklahoma.

Matt eventually sought out political science professor John McAdams.

McAdam's blog post drew national attention, prompting a series of hate-filled and threatening messages directed at the graduate instructor.

In a 123-page disciplinary report released by MU for the first time on Monday, May 2nd, the university says that naming the instructor on McAdams' blog was "reckless," "irresponsible," "sensational" and caused "substantial harm."

"There's no rule against criticizing colleagues. There`s no rule against criticizing students," Esenberg said.

Esenberg says McAdams had a contractual right to blog about a matter of public interest. The lawsuit accused MU of breaching that contract.

"Marquette holds itself out, as it should, as an institution committed to academic freedom. We intend to hold it to that commitment," Esenberg said.

The lawsuit seeks both McAdams' reinstatement and unspecified monetary damages.

But McAdams says no amount of money would make him go away.

"If they could just pay me off, they would be perfectly happy to pay me off, but that would be a loss for academic freedom," McAdams said.

Statement from Marquette University on McAdams