“If McAdams had a complaint, the appropriate course of action was to take a complaint to the administration, not to expose a graduate student in his power to open harassment.”
Again, inappropriate, yeah. I said that. From what I have heard about this guy, he is inappropriate. His colleagues evidently asserted that he had threatened others in the past and had published other names in his blog in the past. Does being inappropriate warrant silencing at the hands of the university, or, as you prefer to phrase it, being fired for misconduct? In my own experience, a tenured professor gets fired for felonious crimes and basically nothing short of it, and I’m perfectly okay with that. McAdams was fired(/suspended forever - honestly, you’re even using the word fired, so call it fired) and lost his tenure for calling someone out, inappropriately, on the internet.
Ask yourself - would any of this happen if McAdams’ blog post hadn’t gone viral? I’ll bet my annual salary (lol) that it wouldn’t have.
As for your insistence that this graduate student was a student and not an instructor, I imagine that you, having a PhD and all, have been a student a fair few times. Do your instructors’ credentials affect whether or not you see them as an instructor? If you were teaching an undergraduate course while working on your PhD (maybe you have), would you appreciate it if you were belittled by your colleagues and by strangers on the internet that refer to you as a student as if you can’t pull your own weight and defend your own actions? You keep insisting that she was a student, which is true, yes, she was a student in a graduate program. However, she was teaching. Ergo, she’s an instructor. If you have an issue with that, please let me know. Otherwise, I would like to stop pointing out that McAdams called out an instructor and a colleague, who also just happens to be a graduate student, and ask you ever so kindly to start addressing her as an instructor, because she was one.
As for an *instructor* being like a plumber, I’m pretty confident that I actually could ruin a plumber’s entire career and financial future if they flood my house. That’s an expensive lawsuit they’re facing. Maybe they file an insurance claim and stay in business, but they sure are hurting for it. That said, I see no reason to believe that McAdams had any intention of ruining her career, and I say again that the only reason her career is ruined (if it’s even ruined - I see no indication why someone transferring to another school to continue their education is an indicator that their career is ruined) is because other people played vigilante. McAdams doesn’t decide how others treat someone, and I would bet 2018’s annual salary (lol) that he never expected that blog post to harm her in that way.
I do not disagree with your assessment of classroom management. I taught first grade for five years at my religious school before college, and while classroom management is a whole hell of a lot more meaningless when you’re dealing with 30+ first graders, it still matters. I completely get it. I see this as a stepping stone, though. She claimed that gay marriage was not a topic worth discussing. I see that as a topic worth a full and vocal discussion, where this student can learn the error of his opinions via the court of public opinion, particularly his peers, who would have undoubtedly shut him down. With just a year left prior to the SCOTUS case that (hopefully) legalized gay marriage forever, that seems like a very worthy topic of conversation to me. Why she chose to silence his opinion and why she chose to act as if she, an instructor, is not responsible for allowing creative and constructive discussion on ongoing political matters is beyond me. That’s not the type of instructor I would like to be taught by, especially in an ethical theory class. If a brief, or even marginally long, tangent is so damaging to the lesson, especially one that makes a far greater impact on the lives of the students than the lesson otherwise would, then the lesson needs adjusting and so do the instructor’s priorities.
Likewise, I understand your point about the nuances of crafting an argument without going off the rails. If a student is making a terrible or offensive argument, then let the other students shit on his desk. If the fire inside you is burning to the point where smoke is billowing out of your ears, there are students ready to jump at that opportunity as well. That’s a great lesson. Let someone make a bad, if not offensive, argument. Wait for them to finish; give them their moment, even if it’s annoying and impractical. When they finish, rip them to shreds. That’s an argument. That’s what turns a stupid, asinine comment into, as your professor friend says, a constructive contribution.
At some point, the conversation needs to end and the lesson needs to go on. Again, I’m in full agreement with you. The conversation, though, doesn’t have to end before it starts. If you are a student and this happened, the lesson is already disrupted - stupidity has already been unleashed, and hellfire is about to rain down on it from the minds of a dozen other students. Why shut that down with such immediacy? Why not let rational minds beat out the dumbass? Censoring the dumbass only makes the dumbass remain a dumbass. That’s bad teaching. That’s why McAdams was so upset to begin with, and before his post came undone into a rambling free speech argument, he was right.
Obviously, we’re going to disagree here. No matter - the fact that I love a totally open floor and firmly believe that the best way to educate an idiot is to crush their idiocy in debate is irrelevant.
The point that matters to me is that McAdams was fired and/or suspended eternally because the blog post went viral, not because of the contents of the blog post. He was first suspended, with pay, for violating his contract, or for three instances of misconduct. He was then stripped of his tenure later, after the blog post went viral, and after a year and a half, the university made another announcement that he could come back if he apologized. He refused. It was only then, after the media once again made him a viral figure, that the instructor claimed to have feared for her safety and only then that the reports of harassment began. The majority of this never happens if the blog post doesn’t go viral. The only part of this that happens regardless is the suspension, which would have been revoked in a very private manner, but now never will.
I don’t know John McAdams, and he sounds like a dick that spends way too much time worrying about how JFK died so I’m glad I don’t, but I don’t see this as anything but him being silenced. Could the university justify some action against him? Yeah, definitely. Do indefinite suspensions lead to a media circus lasting years on end, closely detailing the loss of his tenure and publicly announcing to the media the conditions of his return if the ultimate goal of the university isn’t to discredit him? No. That’s the nuance of the situation.
Daily Trump News Thread 
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