STEP OUT OF LINE AND DISAPPEAR.

Embattled Marquette University political scientist John McAdams, who previously called out the so-mockworthy Marquette administration long before the Perpetually Aggrieved decided that Eve Ensler was a trans-phobic cis-sexist, recently reported a mural decorating the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center that valorized a cop-killer still on the lam in Cuba.  Evidently, palling around with exiled terrorists is too much even for Marquette's administration, which today tossed the center's director.  The story has gone national, and there is a student petition drive to reinstate the director,  Susannah Bartlow, whose very existence has been scrubbed from the center website.  It's possible that she joined Marquette from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Penn., without tenure.

RUNNING EXTRA.  Professor McAdams was posting on the exile of Ms Bartlow about the same time I was working on this post last night.  (I confess to being distracted by a hockey game.  Go Hawks.)

Back in the old days of the USSR, there was something known as the “vertical stroke.” If a lower level bureaucrat (an Army officer, perhaps) screwed up, not only was he fired or demoted, his immediate superior got the same treatment. And so did his superior’s superior, right on up. In the army, this could be up to the corps or army level. This had some negative consequences: it created a huge incentive to conceal problems. But it did embody a sound principle: higher level people are responsible for their subordinates. The top people put the lower level people in charge, had the power to fire them, and had the responsibility to properly supervise them.

It’s a shame the “vertical stroke” won’t happen here.  Bartlow screwed up badly.  But the ultimate responsibility lies with top Marquette administrators, who created a large “diversity” and “inclusion” and “gender” and “sexuality” bureaucracy, hired the kinds of bureaucrats drawn to those offices, and now find themselves embarrassed when the predictable things happen.

Per corollary, a department head, a dean, a provost, and a president also sign off on continuing tenure.