Judge Scolds DePaul's 'PC' Actions, Lets Fired Prof's Suit Proceed
by Jim Brown
June 7, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A judge has allowed a former DePaul professor to proceed with his defamation lawsuit against the Catholic University that fired him two years ago after he engaged in a heated verbal exchange with Muslim students at a student fair on campus.The two Palestinian students, offended by Professor Tom Klocek's Christian perspective on the Middle East, complained to the DePaul administration, which dismissed the professor. Then, according to his Klocek's attorney, the university began waging a publicity campaign against the professor, denigrating him as a racist and an Islamophobe.
Klocek sued, and DePaul's attorneys filed a motion, attempting to get the case thrown out. Last week, however, Judge Stuart Nudelman denied the university's motion to dismiss. However, the judge's decision in the pre-trial hearing was not what surprised the professor's lawyer, Andy Norman.
"The thing that was actually most shocking," Norman recalls, "to me and probably to everyone in the courtroom, including a small DePaul contingent that was there, was the judge's additional remarks, which had nothing to do with his ruling."
Nudelman "lambasted DePaul for their gross overreaction and their fear of student reaction on campus, which caused them to pillory Tom Klocek," the attorney says. Then, he notes, the judge went on to say that if such political correctness and fear of student response had existed when he was in school, he would have had a far more inferior educational experience.
Norman says he finds it ironic that DePaul University would be opposed to a professor airing his Christian views with students. However, the lawyer contends, the school is Catholic in name only, despite any claims made about its commitment to the Catholic ideals of its namesake, St. Vincent DePaul.
"The attribution of Vincentian values, which you find on their website and which they like to tout publicly, is really a fraud," Norman says. "There's no Christian values there as far as the administration goes. They are decidedly very, very liberal, and not liberal in the sense that there's a free exchange of ideas, but it's an elitist kind of liberalism that frowns upon anything that doesn't agree with them."
DePaul University is one of the ten largest private universities as well as the largest Catholic university in the United States. It is also the largest private university in the state of Illinois, and bills itself as having the foremost Islamic studies program in the nation.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
