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Here is some background as well as some related posts on the Klocek case. Neil Steinberg and the Chicago Sun Times: In September, 2004, Professor Klocek read this Steinberg column. What Neil wrote was the intellectual basis of Klocek's ill-fated discussion with the Muslim students at DePaul. That column was based on this op-ed by Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the al-Arabiya television network. This is the opening sentence of that article: It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims. March...

Thomas Klocek, the fired DePaul professor whose cause I've championed since pretty much the first day of this blog, explains how he was trampled by DePaul's politically-correct hammer in a Quicktime video by Grant Crowell. (It takes a while for the video to download.) Klocek made the mistake of challenging the ossified political beliefs of some Muslim students--who view themselves an a protected class--at a student activities fair in 2004. There's a Ward Churchill tie-in, as the professor asks Ward to speak up for his free speech rights, too. But Pirate Ballerina (the site where I found the video), has...

The SPME petition to reinstate Thomas Klocek, the Roman Catholic faculty member who was fired by DePaul University without due process for challenging Muslim students' assertions of Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the Nazi's treatment of Jews, has already amassed nearly 1000 signatures in three days. The petition, which can be viewed and signed at http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/display_petitions.cgi?ID=3"> calls for his complete reinstatement without prejudice or penalty. Morry Fiddler, a professor at DePaul University, writes, " If I'm not there for a colleague, then who will be there for me?" Other DePaul professors signing the petition to date are Allan Berele, Gary...

Now that denunciations of Ward Churchill have gained an official status, I'm just wondering: Will the administration of DePaul University issue an apology to the DePaul Conservative Alliance for its shameful conduct in trying to censor group's protest of the F-Troop Indian's paid campus appearance last fall? I know these guys, and they way got kicked around by DePaul was reprehensible. Here is the FIRE report on DePaul's misdeeds that revolved around the Ward Churchill appearance. And besides those outrages, there's also the case where DePaul stomped on the free speech rights of the DCA when they attempted to host...

DePaul University is rapidly becoming ground zero in the battle to reform academia’s corrupted political culture. For the third time in less than a year the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has publicly rebuked the university for its politically motivated abridgment of free speech, this time for shutting down an anti-affirmative action bake sale and threatening to punish one of the organizers for violation of a newly instituted anti-discrimination policy. The DePaul Conservative Alliance set up a table in the Student Center where they were selling cookies and suggesting differing prices based on race, ethnicity and gender. It...

Earlier this month, Chicago's DePaul University, pressured by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), agreed to drop its bizarre "propaganda ban" that the administration used as an attempt to silence DePaul College Republicans last fall. Controversial University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill, in a paid appearance, spoke at DePaul, and the College Republicans faced several school administration roadblocks as they tried to protest that event. FIRE's interim president, Greg Lukianoff, stated earlier this month on the Hannity & Colmes show that in terms of free speech issues, DePaul was "a basketcase." Still, with its dropping of the "propaganda...

The latest edition of the DePaulia, the campus newspaper of DePaul, is out and online. For those new to Marathon Pundit, I've been blogging about the misadventures of Chicago's DePaul University for almost a year now. This MP post from last month sums things up pretty concisely. Last March 1, I reported on DePaul's suspension of Thomas Klocek, who defended Israel from exaggerated charges from some Muslim students. As with most American colleges, there truly is a deep liberal bias at DePaul. For instance, last fall, Dr. Harvette Grey invited that hero of the anti-American Left, Ward Churchill, to speak...

DePaul U Confronts Amerikan "Empire" By Steven PlautFrontPageMagazine.com | January 3, 2006Q: How do you know when America has crossed the line into an oppressive, occupational empire?A: When DePaul University begins studying it. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at DePaul and its Dean, one Chuck Suchar (a sociologist), have officially announced a “College Theme Series” entitled “Confronting Empire” for the 2005-6 academic year. This is a DePaul faculty initiative involving the participation of various departments and programs throughout the college. The organizers call themselves the “Empire Committee,” sounding like something out of Star Wars. Naturally, the evil...

CHICAGO, December 21, 2005—A student group that protested a campus appearance by University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill has become DePaul University’s latest victim of censorship. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) intervened after the university banned its College Republicans from posting flyers protesting Churchill’s visit and actually changed its own rules to prevent the organization from attending a workshop that he would be leading. “Just as DePaul was free to invite Ward Churchill to speak, so should its students be free to object to that invitation,” said FIRE Director of Legal and Public Advocacy Greg Lukianoff. “DePaul’s...

Before he became an unlikely cause celebre, Thomas Klocek was an anonymous foot soldier in the bookish garrison of the ivory tower. The job title may be "adjunct," but their myriad ranks are a bulwark of higher education. They teach the introductory courses the permanent faculty disdains. That frees tenured professors to do research and work with graduate students. It also helps balance the budget. Adjuncts are paid by the course, at academia's equivalent of Wal-Mart wages. At DePaul University, where Klocek long taught, he reached a high of $34,000, one year. Other years, his earnings were $16,000. But he...

Thomas Klocek was, until September 2004, a popular adjunct professor in the School of New Learning at DePaul University in Chicago. A private university linked to the Vincentians, DePaul may not be prestigious, but it is one of America's fastest-growing universities. Many readers will recognize it as the home of the notorious anti-Zionist, Norman Finkelstein. Klocek taught at DePaul for fourteen years until his dismissal on what I can only describe, not merely as the flimsiest, but as the most prejudicial of grounds. During a Student Activities Fair, a group of eight students representing Students for Justice in Palestine and...

PRESS RELEASE: October 18, 2005 – Chicago, IL – The DePaul College Republicans, supported by several other Chicago-based Republican organizations and Jewish Groups, will be publicly protesting DePaul University’s paid speaking invitation to controversial professor Ward Churchill, scheduled to speak this Thursday, Oct 20th, 5:30 pm at the University’s Cultural Center on its Lincoln Park Campus. Churchill is to be DePaul’s headline speaker on the subject of human rights for men of color. The CU Professor has received major attention for an essay he wrote shortly after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, where...

Pictured below in the dark jersey is DePaul hoopster Raymon Caplis, playing shortly before Christmas in 1951 under legendary Blue Demon Coach Ray Meyer. Caplis is fighting for the ball with Kentucky's Clifford Hagan. Hagan, like Ray Meyer, would later be enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame. It looks like Caplis got the ball, but Kentucky won that game. And what does that picture have to do with DePaul and Churchill? On Tuesday, a very well-poised blogger Nick Hahn, a DePaul political science major and Republican, was interviewed by KHOW Denver's Dan Caplis, son of ex-Blue Demon basketball player...

Ward Churchill, the let's-pretend Indian who rode political-correctness to a departmental chairmanship at one university, will soon be spouting his anti-American, murderer-friendly hatred at another university, one where they brand you a racist and shut you up if you don't toe the politically correct party line. It's the stuff of unbelievable satire... Let's start with Churchill, who gained tenure at the University of Colorado and was elevated to department head despite lacking a Ph.D. and having a record worse than undistinguished. His primary qualification, it seems, is that he was part Indian, only he isn't. This same man has spoken...

As regular visitors to this blog know, renowned aca-demon Ward Churchill will be returning to his native Illinois and speak at Chicago's DePaul University on October 20 and 21. (The second event, I believe, is not open to the public.) Information, courtesy of the DePaul University Division of Student Affairs' Cultural Center, is available here on their web site. Here is the "Psycho" Ward stuff: October 20, 2005 Lecture: Ward Churchill -Open to DePaul Community 5:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m., Student Center 314-A) October 21, 2005 Multicultural Human Rights Education Workshop (2:00 p.m. 4:30 p.m., Student Center 314-B) -Ward Churchill–...

DePaul University, currently being sued by a professor terminated for a spirited discussion with Muslim students about Middle East politics, has invited Ward Churchill to lecture next month. Churchill is the University of Colorado professor who attracted national attention for his essay characterizing Sept. 11 victims as "little Eichmanns," for explaining that al-Qaida had a legitimate beef with the U.S. and for questions raised about his own background and resume. But Chicago's DePaul as a venue is of particular note given its treatment of professor Thomas Klocek, currently suing the university for defamation over his suspension for behavior in a...

One year ago today, DePaul Professor Thomas Klocek had a discussion with some Muslim students... ....and was suspended because his ideas didn't match the PC groupthink found on almost all college campuses today. On September 15, 2004, Klocek, an adjunct professor at Chicago's DePaul University for 14 years, was walking through a campus cafeteria where a student activities fair was taking place. He noticed a couple of display tables staffed by United Muslims Moving Ahead (UMMA) and the DePaul Chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) More on Students for Justice in Palestine here, courtesy of Frontpage Magazine's Discover...

Thomas Klocek, the DePaul professor who lost his job without due process after arguing with several students about the Middle East at a student activities fair, has now sued DePaul. Much of the suit focuses on claims that DePaul defamed Klocek, in part by providing the public with false and misleading information about his health. Klocek also claims breach of contract. In this case, DePaul has shamefully taken a single encounter where the facts are in dispute (the students and professor present radically different versions of the event), and has transformed it into a veritable festival of repression. First, DePaul...

Several weeks ago The American Thinker informed its readers about the plight of Professor Thomas Klocek, who was fired for daring to question the rabid anti-Israel display by some Moslem students at DePaul University, a Catholic university, in Chicago. Klocek, who is not Jewish, was an untenured professor who taught for many years at DePaul. But now Klocek has responded. An ex-DePaul University part-time faculty member filed a defamation suit Tuesday against his former employer in Cook County Circuit Court, alleging the university breached its employment contract and maligned his character following a verbal confrontation with members of Muslim and...

A DePaul professor who was suspended after having a spirited discussion about the Middle East with Muslim students sued the university and two of its officials for defamation yesterday. Professor Thomas Klocek alleges the administrators wrongly characterized his arguments as racist and bigoted. He seeks damages against the school for maligning his "integrity and professional competence." Last September, Klocek attended a Student Activities Fair on the Chicago campus and happened to visit the table of the Students for Justice in Palestine, a statement announcing the lawsuit stated. After the professor took a handout that showed an Israeli bulldozer destroying a...

CHICAGO (AP) A former DePaul University instructor filed a defamation lawsuit Tuesday against the school, claiming officials maligned him publicly after he got in a heated argument with pro-Palestinian students at a campus activities fair. Thomas Klocek, a 14-year part-time professor, has not worked at DePaul since the Sept. 15 incident involving students from two groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and United Muslims Moving Ahead. Both Klocek and the students agree that a loud argument began after the instructor picked up a pro-Palestinian flier from one of the groups. The students complained to school authorities that Klocek identified himself...

Under the title of "DePaul's predicament: The choice--Stop--or stop justifying--anti-Israel sentiment," the Chicago Jewish Star returns to the issues haunting Chicago's DePaul University. In its previous edition, the Star summarized Thomas Klocek's free speech struggle against DePaul, and it included this quote from Klocek, "I stood for Israel, because it is in the right. I paid the price at a Christian University." The Chicago Jewish Star is not available online, it's a free-weekly. If you're in Chicago's Loop, look for a Jewish Star newspaper box and pick up a copy to see the entire editorial. Here are some excerpts: During...

So what happened? On September 15, 2004, I attended a student activities fair at the Loop Campus of DePaul University. I noticed a group there called Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and I saw they had some literature. On the front of one of the brochures was a picture of Rachel Corey, the American who had been accidentally killed by an Israeli bulldozer. The literature, however, had her murdered by the Israelis; it also included many other incendiary and anti-Israeli remarks. As I was reading the pamphlet, I asked the students, “Did you know that in addition to the...

CHICAGO, May 18, 2005—DePaul University administrators have suspended Professor Thomas Klocek without a hearing after he engaged in an out-of-class argument with pro-Palestinian students at a student activities fair. When the students complained to administrators, Klocek was denied the rights that DePaul guarantees to professors accused of wrongdoing and immediately suspended. Statements from DePaul administrators indicate that Klocek was disciplined because of his harsh criticism of the students’ viewpoint, despite DePaul’s stated commitments to free speech and academic freedom. “DePaul has unquestionably violated Professor Klocek’s due process rights, and the university did so because his statements were allegedly offensive,” commented...

URGENT NEED: DePaul students who support Klocek Please e-mail me at klocekbacker@yahoo.com if you are a current DePaul student who'd like to go "on the record" in support of suspended Professor Thomas Klocek. I will e-mail you back with the details. Thanks!!!!

During the past five years issues relating to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians have challenged university administrators. Not least among the institutions embroiled is DePaul University. The nation’s largest Catholic university, DePaul serves more than 23,000 students. Founded on the principle of admitting people of all religions, the university has no idea how many students are Catholics, Muslims, or Jews, although anecdotal estimates in the Jewish community peg the number of Jewish students at around 1,000. On the one hand, Jewish students at DePaul encounter a campus environment well equipped to serve their social, spiritual, and educational needs....

Like many other students, over the past four years at DePaul, I’ve had very little opportunity to directly see the administration working for the well-being of the student body. In fact, I would say quite the opposite. I’ve seen computers taken out of dorm rooms, free prints removed and tuition and fees increased. That is until recently. DePaul University, more specifically Dean Dumbleton from the School for New Learning and Vice-President Doyle from the office of student affairs made a very difficult decision to protect the students. During this year’s fall quarter at the Loop Campus Student Involvement Fair, representatives...

To: DePaul University Whereas we the undersigned believe that academic institutions have an obligation to promote and encourage the free exchange of diverse ideas and opinions on controversial matters; And whereas, after examining various accounts regarding the circumstances surrounding the unpaid suspension of DePaul Professor Thomas Klocek, we believe that he was punished primarily because of the content of opinions he expressed on a controversial subject; And whereas we believe that his due process rights, including his right to an open, comprehensive hearing on the charges against him, his right to confront his accusers, and his right to academic freedom...

Another word for ‘politically correct’ is ‘intolerant’By JAY AMBROSE Guest Commentary MY ONLINE dictionary has a politically correct definition of “politically correct,” saying that the phrase refers to support for “broad social, political, and educational change, especially to redress historical injustices in matters such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.” It gives a hint at the real meaning when it says the phrase can point to someone who is perceived as being “overconcerned with such change, often to the exclusion of other matters,” and that PC behavior “involves changing or avoiding language that might offend anyone.” But the definition...

Professor Thomas Klocek, the De Paul teacher who was fired after debating Mideast policy with some Muslim students on campus, will be the guest today on "Joseph Farah's WorldNetDaily RadioActive," the nationally syndicated talk program. As Farah explains in a recent column, nine days after the spirited argument, which lasted between 15 and 20 minutes, Klocek received an "emergency suspension" and was unceremoniously kicked off the campus. He was offered his job back if he agreed to monitored teaching and apologized to the students, but he refused. A lawsuit may be in the offing. Besides his special guests, Farah will...

DePaul’s Jihad against academic freedomApril 18th, 2005 DePaul University in Chicago is one of the fastest growing universities in the country. It has become the largest Catholic-affiliated university in America. Muslim and Arab students are one of the segments of DePaul's student population that has seen the greatest increase in numbers in recent years. Although no figures are available, these students are an important source of revenue for the University, and many may well pay full tuition, making their attendance particularly lucrative. Perhaps in recognition of this market segment, the University hired Norman Finkelstein to teach in its Political Science...

Facts are stubborn things - except when you create your own. When I was asked about the "Jenin Massacre" by a Muslim student during an event at Norfolk's Old Dominion this week, it became clear we were coming from two very different perspectives: reality vs. mythology. There was no "Jenin Massacre." Period. The only "massacre" that took place at Jenin was that of the truth. Palestinians, long masters of media manipulation, went by the hundreds to foreign media - whom Israel kept outside of the armed conflict - to claim that over 500 innocents had been slaughtered. The man at...

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...

Catholic universities in the United States have in recent years shown a weakness for cultivating far-leftist anti-Semites and haters of America. Perhaps the best known has been Notre Dame, home of the extremist Kroc Institute, which attempted to sponsor Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss Arab with ties to Al Qaeda, for a three-year professorship. But in many ways, DePaul University is even worse. DePaul is a large, if not particularly academically renowned, Catholic college in Chicago, nominally associated with “Congregation of the Mission,” more popularly known as the Vincentians. Until recently, the main cause of controversy surrounding DePaul was its insistence...

After the University of Colorado's Ward Churchill scandal, you might think it's nearly impossible for U.S. universities to get rid of faculty members. It's not so. While it's true that faculty members can embrace terrorists, demean their victims, plagiarize the work of others, lie about their ethnic backgrounds for better positions and generally hold America and Americans in contempt, there is something they can say on the college campus that will get them fired. In fact, I can tell you very easily and succinctly what a college professor can do to get the ax on nearly any university campus across...

Columbia Unbecoming is on the whole just a series of complaints having to do mainly with manner or etiquette in the classroom, but the real issue has to do with the meager and politicized content that professors choose to teach. As Efraim Karsh, head of the Mediterranean Studies department at King’s College, University of London, implied on March 6 in Uris Hall, Massad’s classroom hysterics are not the real problem. The real problem is a polite and affable man like Professor Khalidi, who nevertheless peddles political propaganda in class, propaganda masquerading as real scholarship.Two articles in the March 23, 2005...

During his 14 years at DePaul University, Thomas Klocek dwelled in adjunct-professor purgatory, quietly coming and going times a week from his Loop classroom and his home on the city’s Southwest Side. His evalutions from students in the university’s School of New Learning were consistently positive—and that, apparently, was enough for his bosses because nary a supervisor visited his classroom. Klocek’s invisibility ran out, however, one day in September when he got caught up in a heated debate at a student activities fair on the school’s downtown campus. He stopped at a table where two student groups—Students for Justice in...

Liberals need to watch their mouths. After the build-up to war and the presidential election, it's as if they got drunk and said some things they shouldn't have. On www.sorryeverybody.com, liberals have posted messages such as, "We're sorry half our country is a bunch of morons." That translates from drunk-speak to English as "Hey, I'm not going down without a fight!" It's as if now, instead of sobering up and apologizing for their indignation, they're just getting drunker in their bitterness. It's gotten so out of hand, columnist Jay Ambrose recently wrote that liberals' lack of tolerance for conservative or...

Thomas Klocek showed up at DePaul University one day this month to stage a news conference. He taped his mouth shut and used rope and more tape to bind his arms and torso. His point was that the university had gagged him, denying the long-time adjunct the opportunity to teach because of views on the Middle East that he expressed one day in September. That’s one view of the case — and a view that is spreading widely online, where Klocek is being embraced by various groups as a victim of political correctness. Because Klocek was accused of intimidating pro-Palestinian...

Depaul University is a large, if not particularly academically renowned, Catholic college in Chicago. Until recently, the main cause of controversy surrounding Depaul was its insistence on employing notorious anti-Semite Norman Finkelstein as an assistant professor in its political science department. But now, Depaul took a giant step in implementing Orwellianism and anti-democratic suppression of political incorrectness on its campus. The immediate target of Depaul's campaign against political incorrectness was Thomas Klocek, a part-time adjunct professor at DePaul University's so-called "School for New Learning". ("New learning" evidently is not something Depaul confuses with "learning", as the events there show.) Klocek's...

In academia today, “academic freedom” protects those who compare the 9/11 victims to Nazi higher ups, but it does not cover a professor with the temerity to challenge the beliefs of Muslim students in a single encounter which constituted, in the words of his boss, an “assault on their dignity.” Thomas Klocek, a part-time adjunct professor at DePaul University, knows this first-hand; he was unlucky enough to fall on the wrong side of the political correctness fence. With no current income and facing the possibility of losing the health insurance he desperately needs for a serious kidney condition, he has...

Back in September of last year, Thomas Klocek did what you'd think is perfectly OK for a professor to do — mandatory, even, for one who is intellectually honest and believes it his mission to challenge students to think clearly and know what they are talking about. It may have wrecked his life, however, when he stopped at a table at a student-activities fair to debate for maybe 20 minutes with students maintaining that Israel was murderous in its treatment of Palestinians. He argued back. Israel, he said, tries to avoid civilian casualties in warring against terrorists, but Palestinian suicide-bombers...

A part-time adjunct professor at DePaul University has been suspended over an argument he had last September with Muslim and Palestinian students concerning the Middle East situation and Israel's role in it. The case has raised troubling questions both on campus-where many students and professors were not aware of it until several months after the fact-and off. Did 58-year-old Professor Thomas Klocek "verbally attack" the students for their "religious beliefs and ethnicity," "demean their ideas," "dishonor their perspective" and "press erroneous assertions," as the school has charged? Or is it a case of "political correctness run amuck" at the nation's...

As the just-resigned president of the University of Colorado said, there’s a “new McCarthyism” alive in America. But it’s hardly what was gnawing at her. Her expressed fear was that critics of Ward Churchill, a professor of sorts at her institution, now feel “empowered.” Wow. Churchill, in case you forgot, is the guy who as much as said that all of those killed in the Pentagon and most of those killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11 had it coming. He hates America. He advocates violence or whatever it takes to change things. He seems to have received tenure...

Adjunct professor Thomas Klocek of the School of New Learning staged a press conference Tuesday, March 1 to protest his suspension from his teaching position. The suspension stemmed from an incident last academic quarter involving two cultural student groups. According to those present, Klocek was involved in heated arguments in which school officials later said was "threatening and disrespectful to students." In a formal letter to the board of trustees sent out by his attorney, Klocek listed several demands from DePaul: “A public apology by the President to be published in the DePaulia stating that DePaul violated its own policies...

March 1, 2005 — A dispute over censorship inspired a DePaul University professor to show up at his own press conference bound and gagged. Last fall, DePaul University professor Thomas Klocek was suspended without a hearing for challenging the viewpoints of certain Muslim students on campus at a student activities fair. He is now demanding a public apology from the university president in order to avoid litigation. Klocek showed up to the news conference bound and gagged, illustrating what he believes the university did to him by censoring his views on the Middle East. Klocek says he was unfairly suspended...