No less than three nationally-recognized entities have severely criticized Marquette University's action against Professor McAdams: FIRE, Dr. D. Downs of UW-Madison, and AAUP. In addition, Daniel Maguire (!!) of MU's faculty, joined in McAdams' defense. Another MU-related attorney, Rick Esenberg, also wrote MU to defend McAdams--and, incidentally, (acting as McAdams' counsel) raised the bar a few feet with the threat of civil action for defamation.
All the documents can be found at McAdams' blogsite.
For its part, Marquette has clammed up after a few carefully-chosen words reported by local media.
So what's going on here?
Is this a case where the newly-installed President of MU took some seriously flawed advice and pulled the trigger without checking with counsel? Was he so busy carrying on with the Bucks and with Dwayne Wade that he just sorta nodded a vague approval of schmeissing McAdams without due diligence?
Or did the decision come from a lower-rung bureaucrat in the MU H.R. operation? In that case, one should not go long on that individual's career prospects at MU--because, unless there's a smoking gun found in McAdams' hand and a dead body in the same locked room with him, Marquette is in deep, deep, doo-doo.
On the other hand, maybe MU's top dogs made the decision that they would "fire" McAdams and simply pay him off in a settlement with a "shut-up" clause. IOW, they were willing to take the short-term hit in order to stifle McAdams, and they gambled that in the long run, this would go away.
Hmmmm.
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