On Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that Marquette University shouldn’t have fired a conservative professor because he criticized a student instructor whom he believed had terminated discussion about opposition to gay marriage.
The court ruled that former Professor John McAdams, who has a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University, and was Associate Professor of Political Science at Marquette University, should immediately be reinstated, and that Marquette had breached its contract with him guaranteeing him academic freedom, as NBC4 Milwaukee reported. The court wrote in their opinion, “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.”
In McAdams’ 2016 lawsuit, he argued that his firing wasn’t prompted by his November 2014 post on his website, but rather because he named the instructor and linked to her personal website that had personal identifying information. McAdams’ post delineated a confrontation between a conservative student and a graduate student instructor of philosophy. The student claimed the instructor would not permit discussion about opposition to gay marriage during a class; the student gave McAdams a recording he secretly made of a conversation with the teacher after the class.
McAdams segued to arguing that the incident was yet another occurrence of liberals silencing people whose opinions differed from theirs. That reportedly elicited threats made against the student instructor; she later moved to another university.
Ralph Weber, Marquette’s attorney, argued, “Had he written the exact same blog post and not included the student-teacher’s name and contact information he would not have been disciplined. He’s being disciplined for his conduct, not any viewpoint.”
McAdams’ attorney, Rick Esenberg, pointed out that McAdams linked to publicly available information. The lawsuit stated that McAdams’ decade-old website had often condemned political correctness.