A tenured professor who was fired for writing a blog post that defended a student&#8217;s right to an opinion, has returned to work &#8212; and says he has no regrets or hard feelings.
Professor John McAdams was fired by Marquette University three years ago after he wrote a blog post defending a student who was told by another professor not to share his opinion on same-sex marriage in class, since that opinion ran counter to the liberal orthodoxy.
McAdams didn&#8217;t say he agreed with the student, just that the student should be able to express his opinion. For this, he was <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/05/judge-catholic-university-can-fire-tenured-prof-supporting-student-stood-catholic-teachings/">brought before</a> a Faculty Hearing Committee that resembled the kangaroo courts that college students face for political correctness. Two of the members of the committee had conflicts of interest, McAdams insisted, but weren&#8217;t removed. The committee recommended he be suspended, but the president of the university, Michael Lovell, told McAdams to apologize for writing the blog post or be fired. McAdams refused to apologize for what was a simple academic argument, and was fired.
He sued, and after a three-year court battle (during which, a judge last year said the Catholic university was within its rights to fire a professor for defending a student who expressed an opinion that lined up with Catholic teachings), Marquette has grudgingly agreed to rehire him.
After the setback last year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court took up McAdams&#8217; case and ruled in the professor&#8217;s favor.
&#8220;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&#8217;s guarantee of academic freedom,&#8221; <a href="https://www.thefire.org/opinion-of-the-supreme-court-of-wisconsin-in-mcadams-v-marquette-university/">the court wrote</a>.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) spoke with McAdams after he returned to work, and found the professor harbors no ill will toward his employer.
&#8220;I&#8217;d feel hurt if I&#8217;d lost, but I won,&#8221; McAdams told FIRE.
McAdams is now working on a book, called &#8220;60 Politically Incorrect Things You Should Know.&#8221;
Marquette, on the other hand, is not happy with the court win, <a href="https://news.marquette.edu/news-releases/marquette-university-statement-on-wisconsin-supreme-court-decision/">issuing a statement</a> that said it still believes McAdams&#8217; &#8220;behavior crossed a line,&#8221; and that it would &#8220;re-examine its policies, with the goal of providing every assurance possible that this never happens again.&#8221; As FIRE noted, this seems to suggest the university might &#8220;modify its faculty contracts to decrease their academic freedom.&#8221;
For now though, McAdams has his job back.

Professor Who Defended Student’s Right To An Opinion Returns To Work After Three Years And One Major Court Battle

Marquette University

Same-Sex Marriage

Wisconsin

On Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that Marquette University shouldn&#8217;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 <a href="https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/john-mcadams">has</a> 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 <a href="https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/wisconsin-supreme-court-marquette-university-violated-professor-john-mcadams-free-speech-rights?page=2">reported</a>. The court wrote in their <a href="https://www.wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/DisplayDocument.pdf?content=pdf&amp;seqNo=215236">opinion</a>, &#8220;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&#8217;s guarantee of academic freedom.&#8221;
In McAdams&#8217; 2016 lawsuit, he argued that his firing wasn&#8217;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&#8217; 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&#8217;s attorney, argued, &#8220;Had he written the exact same blog post and not included the student-teacher&#8217;s name and contact information he would not have been disciplined. He&#8217;s being disciplined for his conduct, not any viewpoint.&#8221;
McAdams&#8217; attorney, Rick Esenberg, pointed out that McAdams linked to publicly available information. The lawsuit stated that McAdams&#8217; decade-old website had often condemned political correctness.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules For Fired Conservative Professor

Free Speech

On Wednesday night, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at Marquette University, where an attempt had been made to sabotage the event, and proceeded to pulverize the pervasive victimhood mentality plaguing American society. After the speech, Shapiro followed with an hour-long Q&amp;A, in which he gave precise and penetrating analyses of issues ranging from &#8220;white privilege&#8221; to the comparative virtues of conservatism and libertarianism to what actions he would take in the first month of a Shapiro presidency to a detailed analysis of health care.
Shapiro&#8217;s speech revolved around the pervasive claims of victimhood plaguing American society. He began by recounting the incident at Vanderbilt University in which blacks on campus claimed a bag of dog feces was left in front of the black cultural center as a result of racism, then found out it was left by a blind girl. The group then changed its tune to state that the blind girl was marginalized as a result of her disability.
Shapiro commented:
<blockquote>
And this is what drives the Left now on college campuses: this idiotic theory of intersectionality, where everyone is broken down by victim class . . . there&#8217;s a hierarchy of victimhood; it starts with LGBT folks up at the top, and there are black folks and Hispanic folks and female folks, Asian, and Jewish is down here somewhere, and then right at the bottom, the people who are not victimized at all in any sense, of course, are white &#8220;cis-gendered&#8221; males . . . White &#8220;cis-gendered&#8221; makes are the victimizers; they have made society so cruel, so awful, so evil.
And the purpose of intersectionality is to suggest that unless you rank high, we can determine the value of your opinion by the value of your identity, which seems kind of racist, doesn&#8217;t it? But that&#8217;s how it works. So if you are the unicorn of intersectionality, if you are the bisexual, transgender female little person with a disability, three-quarters black and one quarter Native American, we can all go home.
No one ever gets to have an opinion again. We just appeal to this particular unicorn of intersectionality; everyone has a lower moral status than this person, and so we declare this person dictator, we&#8217;ll call this person &#8220;Bob,&#8221; . . . and &#8220;Bob&#8221; now gets to tell everybody what to do, because this is how intersectionality works.
On campus, because there is such focus on victimhood, a certain &#8220;victim privilege&#8221; has been established. Not &#8220;white privilege,&#8221; &#8220;victim privilege.&#8221; If you&#8217;re a member of a victim group, you now have a privilege. And that privilege amounts to, you get to tell other people to shut up and you also get to hurt people.
</blockquote>
Shapiro referenced the riots at Berkeley, the attempt to ban Shapiro from DePaul University, and the riot at Cal State Los Angeles when he spoke there. He read the letter from a feminist group from Marquette which protested his appearance, quoting, &#8220;As we are sure you are aware, Ben Shapiro is scheduled to speak on campus on February 8, 2017,. Shapiro is a well-known commentator who has built a career around perpetuating racism and xenophobia, actively fighting against human dignity.&#8221;
Shapiro quipped, &#8220;I&#8217;m losing, apparently,&#8221; He continued reading, &#8220; . . . a core principle of Marquette University. Not only does the presence of Shapiro at our university threaten the values we strive to uphold, but it also undermines the theme of this year&#8217;s Mission Week, &#8216;Racial Justice: Black, White and the Call of the Church&#8217; as well as Black History Month, both of which are interrupted by Shapiro&#8217;s talk.&#8221;
Shapiro paused, &#8220;I didn&#8217;t realize I could stop time.&#8221; As the crowd laughed, he added, &#8220;I have great powers of which I was not even aware.&#8221; Reading again, &#8220;While we recognize and respect the variety of political opinions at Marquette,&#8221; Shapiro paused, as the audience laughed again.
Shapiro finished the letter, demolishing its points one by one, then referenced the attempt that was made to sabotage his speech, mentioning Chrissy Nelson, the program assistant at The Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies, who had been chiefly involved, calling her a &#8220;professional useless person.&#8221; That brought laughter and sustained applause.
Shapiro then zeroed in on his central thesis: &#8220;For all of the talk about victimhood on college campuses; for all of the talk about how everyone in the world is a victim, everyone is a member of a class of victim, if you live in the United States, society is not victimizing you. This is not to deny that there are individual racists, that there are individual sexists, that there are individual homophobes. But if you live in the freeist, most prosperous country on the face of the earth and in human history, you don&#8217;t really get to complain about class victimization because it isn&#8217;t true.&#8221;
Shapiro buttressed his argument with a ream of statistics. He joked about the Audi commercial at the Super Bowl: &#8220;The wage gap . . . You saw in the idiotic Audi commercial during the Super Bowl, with a little girl who&#8217;s driving around in a little go-Kart, and then the father saying over, &#8216;How am I going to tell my daughter she&#8217;s destined to live barefoot, pregnant in a kitchen in Afghanistan?&#8217;&#8221; (laughter) Shapiro continued, &#8220;And then at the very end, they put her in an Audi and then she&#8217;s all happy, and it&#8217;s like, &#8216;Wait, she&#8217;s all happy? Why did the Audi fix things? I don&#8217;t understand.&#8217;&#8221;
Shapiro commented: &#8220;Here&#8217;s the problem: You divide us all from each other; you make things worse. Instead of expecting standards of behavior, instead of expecting you to be a good person, the answer that&#8217;s put forth is that you must be victimized by society. And this makes people crazy, and this makes people unsuccessful.&#8221;
He concluded:
<blockquote>
When you tell people, falsely, that American society is out to get you, it turns out people give up. If you want people not to give up, you have to say this: your life is in your own hands. Stop navel-gazing; stop worrying about all the people out to get you. Turns out in American life, no one cares about you. No one does. You got your parents and you got your friends and you got your family, and that&#8217;s it. No one cares enough about you to try to stop you from fulfilling your dreams. And the government is the only body powerful enough to stop you from fulfilling your dreams, as a general measure. So it seems to me we should all spend less time worrying about what victims we are, and more time on how we are going to succeed. And if we do that, and if we fulfill basic standards of decency that are necessary for success in a free society, we&#8217;ll have a better, more decent society, not a less good, more divided society.
</blockquote>
Then came the Q&amp;A, in which Shapiro demonstrated his command of various subjects, as well as his sense of humor:
<blockquote>
Q: Since you deny the existence of white privilege, do you deny the &#8220;white racial frame?&#8221;
A: You&#8217;ll have to define for me what &#8220;white racial frame&#8221; is. Is it an 8&#215;11? (laughter)
Q: It&#8217;s kind of the lens that our society looks through that sees white as the normative and other races as &#8220;the other.&#8221;
A: America is ethnically a majority white society, so it seems to me that statistically speaking, if you&#8217;re a marketing firm, for example, and you&#8217;re trying to market a shampoo, and you&#8217;re trying to put somebody on the cover of that shampoo and the norm is that it&#8217;s somebody who&#8217;s white, that makes a certain amount of sense. If you&#8217;re trying to market it to a black crowd, then you&#8217;ll probably use a lot more black people on the cover of the shampoo bottle.
Q: One of the ideas that the white racial frame posed whites as the norm is something like &#8220;The beauty standard is white. When you look at Miss Universe or anything like that, all the top twenty candidates are all white.&#8221;
A: To take an example that counteracts that, I think that, can we have a show of hands in the room? How many guys in here think that Beyonce&#8217;s kinda hot?
</blockquote>
Shapiro, as well as tons of guys in the room, all held up their hands as the crowd laughed.
Another:
<blockquote>
Q: I&#8217;m a leftist.
A: Thank you for coming; I appreciate it.
Q: My brother&#8217;s actually a big fan. (gesturing to the back of the room) He&#8217;s up there.
A: So do you guys punch each other or what? (laughter)
Q: I actually don&#8217;t disagree with most of the points you are making, or at least a lot of them-
A: So why are you a liberal? (laughter)
</blockquote>
A back-and-forth ensued in which Shapiro destroyed the idea of institutional racism. The next question revolved around police training; Shapiro pointed out in his answer, &#8220;I think it&#8217;s also important to acknowledge that police have legitimately the hardest job in America, and expecting them to act like automatons is kind of difficult.&#8221;
<blockquote>
Q: Why conservatism over libertarianism?
A: This is a great question. Here&#8217;s my view on conservatives and libertarians: I have a very libertarian view of government; I have a very conservative view on society. What I mean by that is libertarians, very often, will say that social institutions that are conservative, are not necessary. So a lot of libertarians are very anti-churches, they&#8217;re very anti kind of community organizations; they&#8217;re very atomistic in terms of their views of individuals. Every individual is their own island, and even leaving aside government, there&#8217;s no reason to have religious communities, because those religious communities are oppressive . . .
My view of libertarianism is pretty much the same as the libertarians, which is the government sucks at everything and shouldn&#8217;t be involved in virtually anything. I agree with that. I think that why I&#8217;m a conservative and not a libertarian is because I also understand that there&#8217;s a social fabric that libertarianism doesn&#8217;t tend to talk a lot about, and that social fabric only exists in the presence of common values that we all share. I say that those values should not be inculcated by government; those values should be values that are held at the community level. We should all have these decent values that we&#8217;re taught by our family and our churches and by our friends; that&#8217;s what&#8217;s going to allow us to live together. Libertarianism falls apart without the social fabric; every society falls apart without the social fabric, and when the society starts to fall apart, what ends up happening is that people look to the government to enforce.
</blockquote>
Shapiro then outlined a process in which conservatives and libertarians could effect a merger.
<blockquote>
Q: What would the first month of a Shapiro presidency look like?
A: First of all, a lot fewer executive orders . . . I think that an attempt to restructure entitlements would be very high on the priority list; if you&#8217;re going to do it, so it early in your presidency, obviously, because you&#8217;re going to feel blowback for doing it, and if we don&#8217;t fix the entitlement problem than the government is basically done; 80% of our budget is entitlements, essentially, only 20% is defense . . . I would have a basic rule, and the basic rule would be, I will not sign any bill that is longer than three pages and not in plain language. I want the American people to understand what it is that people are voting for and what they&#8217;re signing. I would also fire half the executive branch immediately. I would disband not just three departments; I would disband a lot of departments. And I won&#8217;t bother naming them because of &#8220;Oops.&#8221; I think government by executive fiat is gross; I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s what the presidency was designed to do, and I would take structural measures to undermine the power of the federal government so that the person who came after me could not revamp it. I would devolve a lot of power to the states; I would devolve a lot of power to localities . . . I would be maybe the first president in history trying to undermine the power of the executive branch on behalf of the legislature and simultaneously strengthen the military on behalf of national security.
</blockquote>
Shapiro spoke of the tendency for politicians on both sides of the aisle to pander to constituents; the decline in political discourse (which he addressed by noting vitriol in American politics dates back over two hundred years, adding another of his pithy impromptus by saying, &#8220;when civility conquers truth, then it&#8217;s counterproductive&#8221;) and whether &#8220;under God&#8221; in the Pledge of Allegiance should be removed, (&#8220;No . . . I think a more important issue is should God come back into the churches. I think that too many churches and religious institutions have decided that religion is secondary to political correctness.&#8221;)
Finally: health care. A young man referenced a column Shapiro wrote:
<blockquote>
Q: You said that if you had to go find a cheap X-Ray or a cheap armchair, you would go to find an armchair. 
A: If your life depended on, you have to find a chair today and buy it now versus you have to find an X-Ray and buy it now, you would buy the armchair, yes.
Q: My question is, part of what allows you to find a cheap armchair is that there&#8217;s such a difference in quality . . with health care, you don&#8217;t really want to go to some guy who&#8217;s offering a $5 X-ray and say, hey you want an X-ray&#8221;
A: Why?
Q: Because if your life depended on it, I don&#8217;t think that would be a situation where you would be willing to risk the &#8211;
A: So let me ask you this: Why should an X-ray cost $200, $1000 through an insurance company? It&#8217;s literally a machine; an X-Ray technician takes a picture with it and then sends it to a radiologist who actually looks at it, or a doctor looks at it. The reason I&#8217;m saying this is because what I&#8217;m saying is that one of the reasons these things are so much more expensive and so much less competitive is because you do not actually have a free market in health care. You have a heavily, heavily regulated marked in health care. If you want cheap X-rays, you have to have a competition in the X-ray business. There is no competition in the X-ray business. You can&#8217;t go and look up a list of X-ray companies that are going to give you an X-ray today and then call them for the lowest price. In fact, if you go in to the doctor right now, and you say, &#8220;I want you to take a look at this X-ray, how much will it cost me?&#8221;, the doctor will tell you &#8220;I can&#8217;t give you that answer. The doctor will tell you, &#8220;I&#8217;m going to have to have to talk to your insurance company,&#8221; or maybe, &#8220;I&#8217;ll have to run it through my system, I&#8217;ll get back to you.&#8221; Is there any other product in America where if you went into a restaurant, and said, &#8220;How much is that cup of coffee?&#8221; &#8221;Drink the cup of coffee, we&#8217;ll tell you later.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Shapiro continued with a detailed analysis of health care and free markets. When the questioner asked if he could say one more thing, he told the crowd that in the interest of fairness they should show up for Shaun King&#8217;s upcoming speech later in the week. Shapiro responded, &#8220;I agree; I think everybody should go listen to Shaun King. And then Shaun King should debate me.&#8221;
Video below, courtesy of YAF:
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe loading="lazy" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VeznvyQEGI8" width="560"></iframe></div>

Shapiro At Marquette: Pulverizing Victimhood Mentality

Ben Shapiro

A feminist student group at Marquette University wrote a letter to the university&#8217;s president, Michael Lovell, accusing Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro of &#8220;perpetuating racism and xenophobia,&#8221; and urging Lovell to take action regarding Shapiro&#8217;s <a href="http://www.yaf.org/events/ben-shapiro-marquette-university-2/">upcoming YAF-sponsored lecture</a> on campus.
The group calling itself &#8220;Empowerment,&#8221; which terms itself on its <a href="https://www.facebook.com/muempowerment/">Facebook page</a> as &#8220;Marquette&#8217;s Gender Equality (Feminist) Club; dedicated to the promotion of inclusive discussion concerning intersectional feminism,&#8221; writes in the letter that students &#8220;demand [the] university take responsibility.&#8221;
Full of false charges, the letter starts by attacking Shapiro on false grounds: &#8220;Shapiro is a well-known political commentator who has built a career around perpetuating racism and xenophobia and actively fighting against human dignity, a core principle of Marquette University.&#8221;
Then the letter segues to a series of spurious charges:
<blockquote>
&#8220;Ben Shapiro believes Muslim people should not be able to immigrate or seek asylum in the United States.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Wrong. As Shapiro <a href="http://get-link-youtube.com/watch-ben-shapiro-how-to-debate-islamic-illegal-immigration/">said</a>, &#8220;This is not a religious issue; it&#8217;s a values issue. Are the people you&#8217;re bringing in going to make the country a better place? . . . Do they believe in any of the same American rights that we believe in or not?&#8221;
<blockquote>
&#8220;Ben Shapiro believes racism is no longer an issue for People of Color.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Wrong. As Shapiro <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/4603/watch-ben-shapiro-destroy-argument-institutional-hank-berrien">memorably stated</a> when queried about the validity of institutional racism, &#8220;I hate racism. I think it&#8217;s evil. But if you&#8217;re just going to say &#8220;institutional racism&#8221; every time something bad happens, there&#8217;s no way to fight it. I need a policy that you&#8217;re proposing, or I need a person who&#8217;s actually racist so we can fight it together . . . I want to be on your side. I do. I want to fight racists. Again, I think racist behavior is evil. I want to fight it with you. But I can&#8217;t fight it if you&#8217;re not showing me what it is.&#8221;
<blockquote>
&#8220;Ben Shapiro believes that the plague of sexual assault is a political scam.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Try again. Shapiro <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2014/12/10/to-the-left-lying-about-rape-is-just-dandy-n1929559">wrote</a>, &#8220;All decent human beings believe that rape is evil. They also believe that false allegations of rape are wrong. These two positions are not mutually exclusive. They complement one another. False rape allegations do actual rape victims a tremendous disservice: to lump in false accusations of rape with true accusations of rape makes people more skeptical of rape victims generally, a horrible result. Rape should be taken seriously; rape accusations should be taken seriously.&#8221;
<blockquote>
&#8220;Ben Shapiro believes that the killings of many Black People by police are justified because they are criminals.&#8221;
</blockquote>
<a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2014/08/20/the-great-racial-disconnect-on-police-n1880725">Nope</a>. &#8220;There is a pattern here: a widespread belief in the black community that the justice system is rigged against them. That belief is not without basis &#8212; there is no question that America has a history of racism within the criminal justice community. By the same token, there is also no question that American law enforcement is the least racist it has ever been, by a long shot, and that racism within the law enforcement community is broadly considered unacceptable and vile.&#8221;
<blockquote>
&#8220;Ben Shapiro questions the truth that every person is deserving of dignity and respect.&#8221;
</blockquote>
<a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/9396/shapiro-yale-hank-berrien">Nah</a>. &#8220;Decency means something. Diversity isn&#8217;t a bad thing, but it isn&#8217;t a good thing unless the people who are racially diverse are decent. Diversity isn&#8217;t a bad thing unless the people who are racially diverse are indecent. It&#8217;s not a difficult thing; diversity isn&#8217;t our strength. Decency is our strength.&#8221;
Or:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Not sure when basic human decency became irrelevant in selecting a political nominee.
&#8212; Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) <a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/714925843659755521">March 29, 2016</a></blockquote>
</div>
The letter also complains, &#8220;How will you explain to Students of Color that the discrimination and microaggressions they experience daily is not an illusion?&#8221; and &#8220;How will you maintain the values of Marquette University while hateful rhetoric against certain students is being perpetuated at University-sanctioned events?&#8221;
Uh-oh: Shapiro may question the validity of the feminists&#8217; microaggressions?
Young America&#8217;s Foundation, which is sponsoring the lecture by Shapiro, had a <a href="http://www.yaf.org/news/marquette-feminists-demand-president-take-action-shapiro/">salient comment</a> for the Marquette administration:
<blockquote>
If you care about the conservative students on your campus who are constantly harassed for their beliefs, and if you care about engendering an environment that facilities intellectual inquiry, you will ignore this letter, apologize for the <a href="http://www.yaf.org/news/marquette-university-staff-caught-blocking-access-shapiro-yaf-lecture/">actions</a> of your staff, and send President Lovell to attend the lecture.
</blockquote>

Marquette University Feminists Tell University President To Take Action Against Shapiro

The program assistant for Marquette University&#8217;s Center for Gender and Sexualities, Chrissy Nelson, who <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/12960/marquette-u-staff-caught-sabotaging-shapiro-event-hank-berrien">attempted to sabotage</a> Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro&#8217;s upcoming speech, has been reprimanded by the center for which she works.
Angelique Harris, the director of the Center for Gender and Sexualities, told <a href="http://watchdog.org/287382/ben-shapiro-marquette-conservative/">Wisconsin Watchdog</a>, &#8220;She does not at all speak for the center or for the university. That is not at all what we&#8217;re doing at the university because we do feel and do believe in freedom of speech, etc. And so she&#8217;s being reprimanded and we&#8217;re dealing with her internally.&#8221; She added that she had &#8220;no idea&#8221; who gave Nelson the idea to encourage people to grab the free tickets and then not show up.
Harris concluded, &#8220;Again, this is just a staff member posting on social media about stuff that I am not aware of taking place or happening, or that other university officials are aware of either.&#8221;
Brian Dorrington, the Marquette&#8217;s senior director of communication, told <a href="https://marquettewire.org/3964581/news/member-of-marquette-faculty-attempts-to-block-ben-shapiro-event/">the Marquette Wire</a>, &#8220;We have addressed this issue internally and will work to make sure that interested attendees have an opportunity to see Ben Shapiro on February 8.&#8221;
Joe Diamond, a Marquette student and the recruitment director for YAF on campus, which is sponsoring the event, stated, &#8220;We are pretty confident that those people will be kept out. And then anyone who wanted to get in, that otherwise would not have been able to get in, will be let in.&#8221;
Nelson had posted on Facebook, &#8220;I just got off the phone with one of the directors of diversity on campus. The suggestion I received and will be promoting is to go the mission week events that day, reserve a seat through eventbrite as a student (to take a seat away from someone who would actually go) and not protest the day of.&#8221;

Marquette Official Reprimanded For Attempt To Sabotage Shapiro Event

Young America&#8217;s Foundation discovered Facebook posts revealing one member of Marquette University&#8217;s staff attempted to sabotage an upcoming Ben Shapiro lecture by getting people hostile to Shapiro to reserve seats posing as students.
A comment on a Facebook thread from Chrissy Nelson, <a href="http://www.marquette.edu/center-for-gender-and-sexualities-studies/">listed online as a program assistant for Marquette&#8217;s Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies</a>, states that a director of diversity on campus suggested to her that people should reserve seats to the lecture through Eventbrite posing as students in order &#8220;to take a seat away from someone who would actually go.&#8221; Nelson responded she would be &#8220;promoting&#8221; the suggestion.
Later, Nelson commented that she &#8220;will encourage students to protest&#8221; Shapiro&#8217;s lecture the day after the event. 
Nelson also alleged that Marquette &#8220;allowed&#8221; Shapiro&#8217;s lecture only &#8220;because of the backlash DePaul University had with not allowing it,&#8221; referring to DePaul&#8217;s decision to<a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/7864/breaking-depaul-university-bans-shapiro-john-minster"> bar its YAF chapter</a> from hosting Shapiro&#8217;s lecture, which was condemned across the board, including by the <a href="http://www.yaf.org/news/chicago-tribune-backs-yaf/">Chicago Tribune</a>. Shapiro was <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/10830/breaking-video-depaul-university-threatens-arrest-amanda-prestigiacomo">threatened with arrest</a> if he set foot on the campus at DePaul.
Nelson instructed former Marquette professor Susannah Bartlow, who was <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/20/susannah-bartlow-marquette-u-professor-fired-for-m/">fired in 2015</a> for allowing the mural of a convicted cop killer to be painted in the resource center, to register for the lecture as a student to &#8220;take away a seat from a student that would be interested in going.&#8221; 
<div class="image"><img decoding="async" alt src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/nelson.jpg" /></div>
In yet another comment, Nelson, identifying herself as &#8220;staff at Marquette,&#8221; wrote, &#8220;what has been directed to students is not to protest because the speaker has told Marquette he hopes students do protest to make an example of the protestors.&#8221; 
<div class="image"><img decoding="async" alt src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/marquette_2.jpg" /></div>
Young America&#8217;s Foundation, the sole sponsor and organizer of Marquette YAF&#8217;s lecture, called on the university to investigate Nelson&#8217;s allegations immediately.
H/T <a href="http://www.yaf.org/news/marquette-university-staff-caught-blocking-access-shapiro-yaf-lecture/">Emily Jashinsky of YAF</a>