Academics all over the United States ought to denounce the firing of the 69-year-old, a Harvard Ph.D. who taught courses on American politics and public policy. If tenure can be taken away based upon one controversial blog post, what protection does it offer? How many tenured professors will censor themselves from participating in public conversation to avoid a similar fate? Marquette has violated core academic values, regardless of what one thinks of McAdams' commentary or the shabby treatment of the graduate instructor he was criticizing (who deserves sympathy for the horrifying torrent of misogyny others directed at her).
MORE
My first thought about this case - I have eight, if you were curious - is that this guy is a shit. You don't call out a grad student by name on your blog just for poorly handling a class discussion. (I do think she handled it poorly. You can't allow students to bring up a point to discuss, in this case gay marriage, and then say that they can only present one side of that debate.) She's a grad student, for Christ's sake. Naming her is a real jerk move.
ReplyDeleteThe grad-student instructor has something of a rebuttal to the Atlantic article (and the general charge that McAdams is being fired over one blog post) here. (Her post also includes quite a list of words that have been directed at her, that would probably be interesting/depressing to feed into the gendered reviews.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read nearly enough to feel that I have a clear sense of exactly what's behind the firing (and, if I read more, I suspect I still wouldn't be sure). However, three things stand out to me (two of them overlapping with Ben's observations):
--Naming the grad student, especially but not only if McAdams was the first to do so, was, indeed, highly inappropriate. It doesn't strike me, on its own, as rising to the level of a firing offense, but it definitely should bring some sort of consequence. If it is, as the student claims, part of a pattern of behavior toward female students and colleagues, then maybe it is, as the last straw in a long chain of behavior, a firing offense. There should, in that case, be a documented string of prior offenses, and warnings.
Delete--Based on the facts that nobody seems to dispute (the transcript of the conversation, which shouldn't exist because the undergrad shouldn't have been recording without the instructor's knowledge, but as long as it does, at least we have some facts to go on, though according to the grad student, they're incomplete, since they don't include the discussion during the next class session), the grad student did, indeed, handle the immediate instructional moment poorly. While the word "inappropriate" has its uses, shutting down conversation/critical thinking is not one of them. If the humanities are going to survive, we're going to have to not only accept, but encourage, rigorous conversations that at least provisionally admit premises that may, in fact, hurt some participants' feelings. It's impossible to avoid offending some people some of the time if we're going to actually have conversations about difficult subjects. A philosopher should be able to guide such a conversation so it is rigorous but not needlessly offensive, in part by foregrounding the kinds of arguments that are being made, how they're being made, what alternative approaches might exist, etc., etc. It sounds like the grad instructor began in (and quite possibly in subsequent classes returned to) that vein, but got somewhat tangled up in the moment represented by the transcript. Whoever was in charge of mentoring her teaching needed to help her work through that (and quite possibly did); calling her out on the internet, or using her as an example of university teaching in general, wasn't appropriate (and there I go using that word, too. So what do I mean? I think in this case I mean that it violates an understanding that the university as a whole -- including faculty in other departments -- has a responsibility to its apprentice teachers to mentor them rather than accuse them of incompetence when they screw up, because, at least theoretically, they're teaching in order to learn to teach.)
--I can't help noticing that McAdams is 69, and that that fact is prominently stated in the Atlantic account. In that account, I suspect the implied facts/questions are that he's an experienced, long-serving, professor, and that age discrimination might be at play; others might mention the same fact in order to suggest that it's time for him to retire already, or even that his actions might result in part from diminishing mental acuity. Maybe I'm projecting a bit as I find myself solidly in the second half of middle age, but I can't help feeling that there's a bit of a generational divide/conflict here (and that we're going to see more and more of such conflicts in the academy in the coming years, and that those of us in the late boomer/early Gen X category are going to get caught in the middle of an epic Boomer vs. Baby boom echo/Millenial battle).
I don't think Abbate handled the initial classroom situation poorly at all: her job is to keep the discussion focused, and the topic wasn't gay marriage, but Rawls' concept of justice. It's hard enough keeping students focused and on task in my field, and I do that sort of "no, that's not a fruitful direction" thing pretty regularly.
DeleteAnd this isn't McAdams' first conflict within the university. He's been told, repeatedly, that harassing colleagues and students by name on his blog is inappropriate. As Abbate points out, McAdams not only highlighted the incident (including false and misleading framing) but her political and social views, so as to maximize the trollery.
I'm officially agnostic as to whether this constitutes a fireable offense, but as a long-time blogger and free speech advocate, I'm honestly not bothered by the fact that he's being called to account, as long as there's a reasonable process by which the issue can be considered and decided.
If the account in the article is correct, and she brought up the example herself (I seem to remember an earlier account, when this incident was first reported, suggesting that the student brought up the example, which is a bit different), then she bore some responsibility for helping the student work through the example in a productive way, at least in the after-class conversation (which it sounds like she tried to do). So, maybe somewhere in between really well and really poorly? I still don't think the "you can't say anything that will offend another student" stance flies, but I'm definitely, if not a free-speech absolutist, at least pretty strongly on the "sticks and stones"/"sunlight is the best disinfectant"/"more speech is the cure for hateful speech" side of things.
DeleteAs far as McAdams goes, it seems that the facts are still emerging (and some may never be known, since it's a personnel matter), but it's looking like Marquette based its decision on a lot more than one blog post. I'm with you, Jonathan: there may be due process issues, but if he did go beyond disagreeing with students to harassing, or inviting others to harass, them, then that behavior, and its effect on the university community (including the ability of others to exercise their free-speech rights) deserves scrutiny.
I've been reading about this case. The prof has a history of publicly harassing young women that he doesn't like. In one case, a young woman who wanted "The Vagina Monologues" to come to her school, the prof posted a link to a website with the information needed to look up the young woman's home phone number so that she started getting hate calls at her parents house. He's been warned by the university to stop using his blog to harass and bully young women from the university and he continued doing it.
ReplyDelete@MA&M: Then the editors of Atlantic have some 'splainin' to do. Where were the fact checkers?
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to tell in the online context, but the tone of the piece (a good deal of "I," "professors ought" early in the piece) makes me think that it might be some sort of opinion piece, which perhaps is subject to a different standard of (or no) fact-checking?
DeleteThe author has updated the piece at the end to acknowledge reference in the firing letter to at least one other incident of a student's name being publicized on the blog (and the student being subsequently harassed), and the author of the article has promised a "follow up piece." Still, yes, you'd think that after the Rolling Stone debacle, journalists would be a bit more careful about vetting the examples/anecdotes they use to make (often laudable) larger points.
the author of the piece is an opinion writer and revels in being "contrarian" especially when it comes to defending conservatives who are the "victims" of "political correctness." See, for example, his defense of businesses such as bakeries or photographers who refuse to do business with gay couples.
DeleteMy thoughts about this are close to those above, plus these two:
ReplyDelete1. How many of us have handled student confrontations in the hallway in ways we regretted or rethought later? It took me many years to develop a repertoire of appropriate yet not spineless responses, and I'm very glad no one was recording my early attempts.
2. Consider the following from today's Los Angeles Times
(sorry, no link due to typing on a phone):
"You should stop telling women they have rights, because they have no rights. . . . Why do you insist on being equal?"
"My wife is like my child. . . She is not educated, she cannot do any business and she has no capital. She entirely depends on me as the only provider. She therefore has no choice but to live by my command and respect what I dictate to her." -- Masai men, quoted by Robyn Dixon, "Showing Masai Girls a New Way," Feb. 10, 2015, L.A. Times.
I've been disappointed to see people I respect defending this awful jerk on the premise that his firing has something to do with academic freedom or admin overreach. He was inviting his army of internet trolls to bully and harass a grad student. This kind of thing is abuse in and of itself and definitely can and does lead to physical harm and he's lucky that hasn't happened so far, although I certainly don't blame Ms. Abbate for moving. If Marquette hadn't moved to discipline him, I would avoid jobs there.
ReplyDeleteNow consider this:
ReplyDelete"The fact that females are allowed to teach beyond the 6th grade is an abomination. " -- Mike Smith, email to Cheryl Abbate, Dec. 19, 2014.
(That's from one of the mildest email responses she has posted, and good for her for not redacting the writers' names or handles and email addresses.)
Oh, boy. Biblical literalism at its worst. I know there are churches where women are not allowed to teach mixed-gender Sunday School classes beyond the 6th grade (or, of course, preach or hold any ordained office) because "though shalt not suffer a woman to preach/teach."
DeleteBut, to the best of my knowledge, those churches are all Protestant. Catholics may not ordain women priests, but they allow them to teach at all levels (including teaching aspiring priests in seminaries).
So, in addition to being odious, this comment probably says something about McAdams' audience, and the odd political alliances forged in the post-Roe world (in 1960, I'm pretty sure this correspondent would have been going on about "papists" and the danger they posed to the American republic).
How heartbreaking to be this woman and experience these things.
DeleteI wonder what the school's social media policy says about this type of situation.
ReplyDeleteMaybe a strict interpretation of academic freedom would not protect his behavior, I think most faculty believe that tenure does protect them from complaining about their school. Certainly, faculty have more leeway in this area than employees in other fields.
Some of the issues get pretty complicated pretty quickly -- particularly the question of whether criticizing a grad student instructor is the same thing as criticizing a colleague who is not also a student (and, given the current realities of academia, what if the instructor is not a student at Marquette, but is a student elsewhere? What if (s)he is especially vulnerable because (s)he's an adjunct?).
DeleteMy gut reaction is that it's beginning to sound very much like McAdams was harassing women with various affiliations with the university, but/and perhaps especially those with the least power (or perhaps they were simply the ones who had the clearest standing to complain). That kind of personal attack is different from criticizing the university, its procedures, and/or its curriculum, and/or the decisions particular people affiliated with the university make that create/carry out all of the above. Though there's some current debate about the subject, I believe strongly that academic freedom has to cover criticism of university decisions/policy, as well as political speech by professors. In fact, I personally feel more of a need to have my right to publicly say "the conditions of my employment affect the quality of my teaching," and to flesh out that argument with examples, protected than I feel a need to have political speech less/unrelated to my job protected.
Somewhere, however, there's a line between attacking/arguing about policy, curriculum, etc., and attacking/harassing a person, and inviting others to do so, and it sounds like McAdams may well have crossed that admittedly-hard-to-define-precisely line.
I agree. The freedom that academics have is based, in part, on the expectations that they not act like this. He definitely crossed the line. Calling out the university president is allowable (maybe) but this is not.
DeleteI wonder if revocation of tenure was discussed when McAdams got in trouble before. If not, then this punishment is out of line. You shouldn't slap him on the wrist then go to the nuclear option without warning. If they did threaten to take away tenure if he did it again, then that's different.
Thanks for this post. I wasn't aware of this case, and haven't read all the details. Just thought I'd comment before this drops off the first page.
ReplyDeleteMy first impression is that Marquette does not have a case for dismissal here. As much as we may despise the prof's opinions and behavior, he has a right to express them in a public medium without fearing for his job.
Now, faculty members who deal with politically charged issues in the classroom need to have the rules of engagement with students (and among students) spelled out in advance, leaving no room for doubt. Having an instructor engage with a student in her office about issues of substance, in an adversarial way, is the kind of thing such policies should not allow.
And the same applies to professors expressing opinions publicly, in a blog, under their own name and in their position as faculty members. There is common sense and "behaving responsibly", and then there are written rules. Clearly the prof's publishing the instructor's name violates the former, and brought on her a damaging level of harassment. But if there are no rules on the Faculty Handbook specifying what a prof can or cannot say in this situation, the university has a weak case. If (as they say) there was a prior history with this prof, why wasn't a policy codified? There should at least be a paper trail of prior warnings to this professor.
I'll believe McAdams gives a damn about academic freedom when he comes out in support of Stephen Salaita (a quick google search suggests not so far).
ReplyDeleteI was pretty sure I remembered hearing about this case here on CM, and indeed Cassandra brought it to our attention in this post. At that time, I read the article linked to that post, as well as several others I found by Googling for Cheryl Abbate, including this one in the Daily Nous. I had thought that Ms. Abbate handled the situation pretty well, except for one little thing that probably played right into the other's hand.
ReplyDeleteIn the after-class discussion, she apparently characterised certain opinions as "not appropriate." I think what she meant was, "fraught to discuss in class, given how quickly the conversation could run well afar of the topic at hand, and given how quickly it could run afoul of Marquette's policy against harassment." I thought it was unfortunate that she didn't explicitly qualify her characterisation as such.
As for McAdams, he seems like a repeat offender bully. Academic freedom and freedom of expression, both in and out of the classroom, are topics worthy of much discussion, but I don't like that he took up the cloak of the martyr while perpetrating an act arguably far more chilling to open discussion than the one that so aggrieved him. The outcome was foreseeable, especially because apparently he'd done it before and had been called out on it.
I think we should follow this case for its implications re tenure, but as more facts come to light I'm prepared to see that it falls well short of the slippery slope.
Now, let's tie this to another post recently active. At my joint, the "gender equity administrator" goes by a different name and wears a few hats, Title IX matters being but one. Her office would be responsible for working to resolve Abbate's grievance against McAdams, as well as his grievance against the university.