DePaul Gets Sued for Suppressing Free Speech

The really interesting question we have is whether DePaul "University" will hire the Michael Jackson Defense Team or the OJ Team.

Yes, DePaul "University" is getting sued by Thomas Klocek. We put the term in quotes because we do not think the heads of DePaul have any interest in maintaining academic standards, scholarly quality, or academic integrity, and until they change their minds they should not be considered a real university.

Just to remind you of the background to all this, DePaul is a Chicago campus in which Norman Finkelstein, a notorious anti-Semite who has been described as a Holocaust Denier by the Anti-Defamation League, a pseudo-scholar whose anti-Jewish rants are carried by every neonazi web magazine on earth, is retained as an assistant professor of political science, but the very same university has fired Prof. Thomas Klocek because he dared answer back to radical student jihadniks handing out their propaganda on campus. Klocek was fired because the administration believes that he holds "incorrect opinions" about the Middle East. Klocek believes Israel has the right to exist and defend itself and that "Palestinians" are an artificial construct.

Klocek was fired after talking back to anti-Israel campus activists in a manner his Dean thought was impolite. Meanwhile, Finkelstein is almost universally regarded as a Holocaust Denier, a Jewish traitor and anti-Semite, and at the very least a fraud and quack. His charlatan "scholarship" and neonazi ideas were recently documented at length by Harvard's Alan Dershowitz. Klocek, in contrast, is a serious and popular teacher, who was dismissed without a hearing because he offended some campus extremists.

Depaul has some bizarre notions of free speech. While its President Dennis H. Holtschneider publicly defends the employment of Finkelstein as a professor, defends the operation on campus of a Bash-Israel propaganda show dressed up as an art exhibit and the performance on the Catholic University campus of the "Vagina Monologues", he has repeatedly denounced Klocek and defended the firing of Klocek because Klocek expressed politically incorrect views.

This week a defamation suit was filed in Illinois’ Cook County Chancery, charging that DePaul University and its leadership defamed Professor Thomas Klocek when DePaul publicly characterized arguments he presented to members of Palestinian and Muslim student groups as racist and bigoted. The suit seeks damages against DePaul for maligning Klocek’s integrity and professional competence. The defendants named include: DePaul University, Rev. Dennis Holtschneider - President of DePaul, and Susan Dumbleton - Dean of DePaul’s School for New Learning. The case was assigned to Judge David Donnersberger.

Holtschneider has been denounced by David French, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE):

“DePaul has unquestionably violated Professor Klocek’s due process rights, and the university did so because his statements were offensive to the students. While DePaul may now argue that the issue is one of professionalism, its public statements at the time of Klocek’s punishment make it clear that Klocek’s real crime was offending students during an out-of-class discussion of a controversial and emotional topic. Academic freedom cannot survive when professors who engage in debate on controversial topics are subject to administrative punishment without even the most cursory due process.”

Rev. Dennis Holtschneider contacted media outlets across the country to slander Klocek and even publicly tried to make Klocek’s health an issue. A letter of his was published in April 9, 2005 edition of The Rocky Mountain News, where Holtschneider wrote,

“Last September, Klocek acted in a belligerent and menacing manner toward students who were passing out literature at a table in the cafeteria. He raised his voice, threw pamphlets at students, pointed his finger near their faces and displayed a gesture interpreted as obscene…. DePaul offered to give Klocek a spring quarter class assignment if he met with the students to apologize for his behavior and if the program director could drop by his class to ensure that the health issues that affected his teaching were resolved. He refused.”

We suspect the jury members from the Michael Jackson trial might believe Holtschneider's version of the events. Funny how Holtschneider does not think that Finkelstein should have his own (mental) health evaluated by a good shrink before being allowed to abuse DePaul students with his politicized in-class propagandizing against Jews.

For more details about the suit, visit our good friends at http://marathonpundit.blogspot.com/. Wanna tell Holtschneider what YOU think? His email address is dholtsch@depaul.edu, and if that does work, then president@depaul.edu