A Dangerous Precedent: Court’s Ruling at Marquette

The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling last week in McAdams v. Marquette University represents a victory for one faculty member in the short term. The long-term consequences, however, pose serious dangers to academic freedom by undermining the century-old principle of shared governance. We, the Academic Senate of Marquette University, are concerned by this ruling. Professors at colleges in Wisconsin and across the country should be as well.

The ruling overturns the suspension of John McAdams, an associate professor of political science. He was disciplined for using in his personal blog a secret recording to criticize a teaching assistant’s handling of an after-class discussion, linking to her contact information, and promoting the story to a hostile audience, which sent her threatening messages. Fearing for her safety, the graduate student left the university.

When Marquette’s administration moved to fire McAdams for this action, he invoked a procedural protection that has existed for faculty members at most colleges for decades: to have a committee of his peers evaluate the university’s case and render its own opinion. The purpose of the faculty review is to protect academic freedom and provide a check on the discretion of administrators. While the decision of the committee is not binding, it gives faculty members an opportunity to voice an opinion. It sets colleges apart from businesses, where an employer typically makes disciplinary decisions unilaterally.

The Marquette Academic Senate’s Faculty Hearing Committee comprised seven tenured professors, drawn from various departments and representing views from across the ideological spectrum. After more than five months of review, it issued a 123-page report that painstakingly balanced McAdams’s right to academic freedom against his professional obligations as a faculty member.

The committee unanimously concluded that McAdams had exceeded the boundaries of academic freedom and should be suspended, that the resulting harm to the graduate student was “substantial, foreseeable, easily avoidable, and not justifiable,” and that McAdams had used his blog previously to retaliate against other members of the university community, including undergraduates.

The senate agrees with the court and with McAdams that the committee’s decision is not binding, and that he should have had the opportunity to challenge it in court. But the court went farther than that. Rather than sending the case back for a jury trial, it decided for itself whether or not McAdams’s actions exceeded the boundaries of academic freedom.

The court essentially threw away the Faculty Hearing Committee report. In doing so, it undermined the role — established by both tradition and contract — that faculty members play in determining what obligations they have to one another and to students.

It held without explanation that the case had to be resolved by looking only at the blog post itself, and not at any evidence that indicated McAdams’s knowledge or intent, or his subsequent exacerbation of the harm caused. It further held, again without explanation, that the professional norms can be based only on written rules. The difficult, fact-specific balance between academic freedom and unwritten norms is the reason that faculty-review committees are necessary in the first place.

Academic freedom is a crucial protection for professors, and reasonable minds can and do differ on whether McAdams’s actions merited the penalty of suspension. This ruling, however, sets a dangerous precedent. It diminishes the role of the faculty in deciding the limits of professional norms and academic freedom. There is a grave risk that after the McAdams decision, those decisions will be made with increasing frequency by administrators, lawyers, and judges rather than by faculty members.

Michelle Mynlieff is a professor of biological sciences and chair of the University Academic Senate, Sumana Chattopadhyay is an associate professor of digital media and performing arts/media studies and vice chair of the University Academic Senate, and Bruce Boyden is an associate professor of law and secretary of the University Academic Senate, all at Marquette University. This statement was adopted by the faculty members of the Executive Committee of the University Academic Senate at Marquette, acting on behalf of the Senate during its summer recess.