DePaul University: Professor Suspended for Expression Without Due Process

Case Materials

• "DePaul Professor Suspended Without a Hearing After Arguing with Students on Middle East Issues," FIRE Press Release, 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.
• "Letter from DePaul President Dennis H. Holtschneider to FIRE, April 8, 2005," April 8, 2005
• "FIRE Letter to DePaul President Dennis H. Holtschneider, March 24, 2005," March 24, 2005
• "DePaul Dean of the School of New Learning Susanne Dumbleton's Letter to The DePaulia, October 8, 2004," October 8, 2004

Media Coverage

• "University presidents battle for honors in spinelessness," John Leo, Universal Press Syndicate, May 1, 2006: Judges agreed they had never seen two candidates as eminently qualified as Rawlins and Holtschneider. Calling the pair “the Ruth and Gehrig of modern Sheldonism,” the judges awarded the golden no-spine statuette to both. Congratulations, Sheldon laureates 2006.
• "DePaul U Confronts Amerikan ‘Empire’," Steven Plaut, Front Page Magazine, January 3, 2006: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has repeatedly denounced DePaul's behavior in the Klocek Affair. FIRE has given DePaul University a speech code rating of “Red,” the worst rating possible.
• "'I'm not the ideal poster boy'," Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune, December 20, 2005: The occasion of Klocek’s fall from grace was a student-activity fair, at the beginning of the 2004 fall semester. Among the organizations there was Students for Justice in Palestine, which supports the Arab side in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Klocek picked up a piece of its literature and was offended. “I said to them, ‘Don’t you know there’s a Christian perspective too?’” Klocek recalled.
• "Letter to the Editor," Charles Mitchell, National Review, December 5, 2005: Thanks to widespread speech codes (cloaked as they are beneath unassuming names) and mandatory diversity training, students do not have it any better. How ironic that the very folks who challenged “the establishment” in the Sixties now make it up—and they happily deny others the rights they so vociferously demanded for themselves.
• "Pariahs, Martyrs — and Fighters Back," John J. Miller, National Review, October 24, 2005: Finding himself on the wrong side of the Israel–Palestine divide, and with the administration refusing to show even a flicker of sympathy, Klocek didn’t know how to respond. He just wanted his job back. He had taught at DePaul for nearly 15 years as an adjunct member of the faculty, and never in this time, according to the school’s administration, had anybody complained about his behavior. But now Dumbleton was finding all kinds of reasons to label him persona non grata. In a November 10 letter, for example, she accused Klocek of being “occasionally disoriented or unfocused,” perhaps owing to a “changing regimen of medication.” (Dumbleton’s Ph.D. is in English, not psychiatry.) She indicated that Klocek could teach one more class, but only if it were monitored — a condition that an increasingly desperate Klocek was willing to accept. Some time later, however, Dumbleton seemed to discourage it. “She told me she couldn’t guarantee the behavior of the students,” says Klocek. “She was basically threatening me with protests.” He decided against returning to DePaul, and in June he filed a lawsuit against his former employers. “This is one of the most brazen violations of academic freedom that I’ve seen,” says David French of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a watchdog group.