MILWAUKEE -- Marquette University President Michael Lovell has issued "a call for decency" following what he characterizes as a "stream of hate and threatening messages" leveled against a former MU graduate student on the internet. This, after MU officials moved to suspend political science professor John McAdams without pay until January 2017.
Marquette University President Michael Lovell
Below is the complete message from President Lovell:
John McAdams
Upon suspending McAdams, MU officials said he could get his job back if he submits a letter of apology by April 4th -- but McAdams does not plan to do that. He instead plans to fight the suspension.
"You can`t say you have academic freedom unless you...violate Marquette`s guiding values," McAdams said.
McAdams has been banned from stepping foot on campus since December 2014, after he wrote a controversial blog post about a student who felt his instructor (an MU graduate student) blew off a request to discuss his opposition to same-sex marriage.
In the wake of the post, Marquette University had begun the process of firing McAdams.
Marquette University
"Whenever a faculty member engages in behavior that we feel cuts against our behavioral norms and our values as a university, then we need to respond," Dan Myers, Marquette provost said.
On March 24th, McAdams learned his suspension was lengthened until January 2017. He was suspended without pay, and required to write an apology by April 4th.
"That`s a deal killer. No, I`m not going to do that," McAdams said.
John McAdams
In a letter to the Marquette community posted on Thursday, Marquette University President Dr. Michael Lovell said the following:
This story started with a discussion in a philosophy class back in October 2014. An unidentified student felt Graduate Assistant Cheryl Abbate blew off his request to discuss same-sex marriage. After class, he went up to Abbate to talk about it, and he recorded the conversation. In part, he said: "Regardless of why I'm against gay marriage, it's still wrong for the teacher of a class to completely discredit one person's opinion when they may have different opinions." Abbate responded by saying: "There are some opinions that are not appropriate, that are harmful -- such as racist opinions, sexist opinions and quite honestly, do you know if anyone in the class is homosexual?"
The student took the recording to McAdams, who posted it on his conservative-leaning blog.
In December 2014, Marquette University asked McAdams to stay away from campus. All of his second semester classes were cancelled.
In a letter dated January 30, 2015, Marquette officials informed McAdams the university was moving to fire him. In part, the letter reads: "Instead of being a mentor to a graduate student instructor learning her craft, including how to deal with challenging students, you took the opportunity to publicly disparage her."
Marquette University
McAdams believed the issue wasn't what he did, but rather, the belief he expressed.
McAdams has the backing of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and is now weighing his options.
"They asked me what I wanted to do and I simply gave them a one word answer 'fight,'" McAdams said.
"We have very high expectations for our faculty members and we want our faculty members to live up to those," Myers said.