BY JOHN K. WILSON
Marquette professor John McAdams, who died on Thursday at the age of 75, was a controversial figure. His most important legacy will be the 2018 ruling of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in McAdams v. Marquette, which is incredibly important in establishing contractual protections for the academic freedom of professors at private universities.
I was an expert witness on behalf of McAdams in his lawsuit and I also spoke with him on a panel about the case in 2019 at the University of Wisconsin at Stout.
I didn’t agree with McAdams on pretty much anything (from his politics to his blog that sparked the dispute at Marquette). But the key figures in important civil liberties cases are often not heroic figures who hold ideas we would proudly embrace.
The controversy began when McAdams used his blog to criticize a graduate student instructor at Marquette, which led to her receiving harsh criticism online.
The McAdams case is really three cases in one:
1) The suspension of McAdams and ban from campus while his case was being considered, which the AAUP denounced in a letter to Marquette.
2) The decision by a faculty committee that McAdams deserved a one-year suspension without pay.
3) The decision by the administration that after the one-year suspension was over, McAdams would remain suspended without any due process until he admitted he was wrong.
Parts 1) and 3) were shocking abuses of due process and showed Marquette’s commitment to eliminate a public critic of the administration. But the faculty committee’s punishment of McAdams was more difficult to evaluate, since it followed due process provisions. I continue to believe that the faculty committee was wrong and violated McAdams’ academic freedom. I believe that faculty have the right to publicly criticize students by name (especially graduate student instructors), and I believe that individuals are not legally or professionally responsible for harassment or threats committed by those who read their criticism of someone.
However, some critics of McAdams here on AcademeBlog.org offered some different perspectives, including Peter Kirstein, Ira Allen, and Martin Kich.
It was not just those on the left who felt ambivalent about defending everything McAdams did. From the right, Donald Downs supported McAdams and was an expert witness for him, but Downs noted in his book Free Speech and Liberal Education, “my testimony did acknowledge the other side of the coin and the harm done to the instructor, thereby making my testimony ambivalent.”
A lower court ruling dismissed McAdams’ case and the idea of academic freedom completely. The AAUP filed an amicus brief in support of McAdams during his Wisconsin Supreme Court case, arguing that academic freedom does in fact mean something. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling, for all its partisan flaws, is a powerful precedent in support of academic freedom
In the wake of the McAdams case, there was some worry that Marquette might change its policies to remove the strong protections for academic freedom. Fortunately, Marquette has retained these policies, and its faculty handbook still provides a clear defense of academic freedom. Predictably, the final entry of McAdams’ Marquette Warrior blog last month was an attack on the “boneheaded political correctness” of the administration at Marquette. McAdams was a culture warrior to the end, and in his battles he helped establish important protections for academic freedom.
