Prof. John McAdams is warning that he may be fired for opposing gay marriage at Marquette University. The university is claiming it is not about free speech, but McAdams isn’t buying it:
“Marquette’s disregard of due process and its incredible denial that its campaign against McAdams’s tenure implicates free speech or academic freedom in any way should frighten anyone concerned about faculty rights,” the foundation wrote in a piece published in March in the Huffington Post. “Indeed, if the university succeeds in removing McAdams, free speech and academic freedom will lose whatever meaning they had at Marquette.”
Even as he faces the threat of losing a post he has held for nearly 40 years, McAdams remains an outspoken critic of policies and actions that trample on academic freedom and free speech, not just at Marquette, but in higher education across the country.
He pointed to the turmoil at the University of Missouri. Amid massive protests on racial unrest at the university, there have been multiple incidents that have threatened if not violated First Amendment rights. While McAdams said reports of actual threats of violence should be taken seriously, he noted that campus police, prompted by the far more powerful politically correct cops, fired off emails to faculty and students advising them to report any comments deemed “hurtful.”
“I think we all know that ‘hurtful comment’ is anything the politically correct types disagree with,” McAdams said.
“What’s happening at Marquette is what is happening everywhere, but that’s a shame because Marquette claims to be a Catholic university. For heaven’s sake, opposing same-sex marriage ought to be allowed at a Catholic university.”
He added that the Marquette administration finds no fault in those who argue for gay marriage.
McAdams said the left has made “offensive speech” anything it disagrees with.
“If you say something that’s just politically incorrect, they want it shut up,” the professor said.
H/T: The Daily Signal.
Maggie Gallagher is a senior fellow at the American Principles Project.
