Marquette University Threatens Academic Freedom

Article here. Excerpt:

'Over at the blog Marquette Warrior, John McAdams provides a good example of how unwarranted investigations of campus speech can cause a deeply problematic “chilling effect” at a university. Universities must not pursue investigations of protected expression just because someone submits a complaint; as soon as it is clear that the expression in question is protected speech, the inquiry must end, even if there are other factual disputes. Prolonging the investigation tells everyone on campus that the university will pursue charges against you no matter how frivolous or malicious the complaint. The likely result is that people self-censor and keep their mouths shut rather than risk such investigation and a possible punishment.

It seems that Marquette University, where McAdams is a professor, made just such a mistake this month. According to McAdams, his introductory course in American politics discusses alleged media bias and takes an anti-feminist perspective:

"Ambiguous sexual encounters, often fueled by alcohol, are defined as “rape” by feminist researchers, but not defined that way by purported victims.
...
We always respond, sarcastically “you’ve got to look at this from the feminist point of view. Males are the oppressor class, and women the victim class. So of course the guy is responsible.”

We typically add “if you wake up in the morning and ask ‘what in the world did I do?’ you haven’t been raped. If you’ve been raped you feel violated. If it requires a feminist political activist to explain to you how what happened was rape, you weren’t raped.”"
...
Marquette has no basis, consistent with free speech and academic freedom, to punish anyone for making a vigorous argument in class, even if some perceived that argument as “demeaning to rape victims.” Nevertheless, Provost John Pauly directed McAdams’ department chair to pursue the investigation. McAdams writes:

"Faculty have a right to disagree with any political movement – including feminists. And social science faculty have a right to debunk bogus social science statistics. … [T]he complaint should have been dismissed immediately. Taking the complaint absolutely at face value, we did nothing but disagree with feminist claims about date rape, something clearly protected by the canons of academic freedom."'