Posted on 04/17/2005 5:33:30 PM PDT by Land_of_Lincoln_John
Chicago’s DePaul University, which has taken a couple of hits for its grotesque squashing of a professor’s free-speech rights, is hitting back, adding defamatory insult to career-ending injury – and a question comes to mind.
It’s a question that was asked by the counsel for the Army in 1954 when Sen. Joseph McCarthy was seeking out Communists in the government. He threw his charges around with little or no evidence; others in Congress did the same, and sometimes reputations were recklessly ruined.
In the hearing, McCarthy got tangled with the counsel, Joseph Welch, in suggesting that a young associate of Welch’s had Communist ties because of an affiliation in his university years.
The question matters today because what’s going on at DePaul and elsewhere is a New McCarthyism, directed this time around not at suspected Communists, but at those who voice views contrary to the politically correct, intellect-stops-here glop that passes for idealism.
The facts of the DePaul case are that Thomas Klocek, a non-tenured professor, got involved in an argument with students from Muslim and pro-Palestinian groups at an activities fair in September 2004 about their insistence that Israel was murderous in fighting back against Palestinian suicide bombers. He was booted from a class he was teaching without a hearing that DePaul’s rules demand, and it appears he will get no future assignments after 14 years of highly praised teaching.
PR staffers and the president of DePaul, the Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, have responded to news accounts and comments with e-mails to readers and letters to newspapers, managing in their self-exculpatory balderdash to worsen the original offense. Some of the ways are:
•They contend Klocek was fired for his conduct, not for what he said. The president has written that Klocek confronted the students “in a belligerent and menacing manner,” raising his voice and throwing pamphlets.
David French, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, says the students were upset because Klocek “said something insensitive to (their) politically correct point of view.” He “got tossed because he hurt feelings,” French said, adding: “What really infuriates me is that the students were handing out literature that is provocative.”
•The DePaul president says there was a “mutual decision” that Klocek would step down after he refused to “acknowledge the inappropriateness of his behavior.” The university has encouraged him “to file a grievance and receive the hearing he claims he was denied,” he wrote, also saying: “Instead, his lawyer threatened DePaul with litigation and demanded a large sum of money. Then, he (the lawyer) hired a publicist in an attempt to exert pressure to secure the financial settlement.”
Unbelievable.
Here is a 23,000-student rich institution with its own lawyers and PR types stomping all over someone, and the president gets his dander up because the poor soul is fighting back.
John Mauk, the attorney for Klocek, points out that his client was called to a meeting where he was not advised of possible consequences, was supplied with no written charges, was given no chance to confront witnesses against him and was given no chance to keep teaching. That’s far from what the university’s rules require, and far from any notion of fair play.
•On top of everything else, the DePaul president, in an e-mail, talks of Klocek staying away from a teaching assignment “while he attended to personal health issues that we discovered were impacting his effectiveness in the classroom.” The president, says French, was “darkly hinting at mental instability.” There is no evidence of that. French says, and I agree, that the medical issue “is a smear.”
All of which brings me to that question Welch asked McCarthy.
“Have you no decency, sir, at long last?”
okay, you knew McCarthy was right, didn't you?
Sickening.This guy is getting railroaded.This type of stuff happens on college campuses all the time."Little dictatorships".What really sux is my tax dollars go to support these schools.
DePaulPew
Don't you get. The only real course for Israel is to simply not exist. That is all those peace loving future suicide bombers wanted. How dare the professor hurt their feelings? The only good thing about these kinds of episodes are that universities are beginning to feel the heat. Maybe by the next generation, universities will represent the USA politically.
I wish you were wrong, but you're not.
Welch's assistant Fischer had indeed been a member of a Communist orgaization and Welch had reported it to the N.Y. Times which had run an article about it with photo two months earlier.
All of which brings me to that question Welch asked McCarthy. “Have you no decency, sir, at long last?”
The question was not asked of McCarthy, but of his Counsel Roy Cohn.
Refrence "Treason" by Ann Coulter pp 113-115 published by 3 Rivers Press copyright 2003.
If we are going to quote, let's be accurate.
I was quoting Ambrose's column. And DePaul has no sense of decency. The real point as a previous poster noted, is that Klocek is getting railroaded.
McCarthy was correct 99.9% of the time. A communist is a communist and is an enemy of the American people. They should be in jail or deported to Cuba or North Korea.
Ping
I would suggest that he contact F.I.R.E. and Evan Coyne Maloney at Brain Terminsl. These people will help him if he is truly being railroaded. Granted, they generally act on behalf of students, but I think they would look at this case as well.
Thanks!!!
I have e-mailed a link to Maloney at Brain Terminal. Perhaps he will get involved.
Thanks, Again, AntiBurr.
I had hoped that Ward would have retired to his sweat lodge by now.
One more ping.
Well, DePaul establishment keeps on denying what is obvious to any thoughtful person--the stifling of free speech in favor of political correctness.
Hopefully the heat will be kept on and the reputation as a free-speech stifler will make DePaul reconsider the actions against Prof. Klocek.
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