PrintThe Klocek case and DePaul University
I am not thrilled with the Chicago Tribune article (registration required) today on the Thomas Klocek case, an article in which I am quoted. I suspect, as do others involved in his case, that DePaul's administration and prominent board members played a role in what the Tribune decided to include in the article. It would be interesting to see what reporter Ron Grossman originally submitted.
While generally sympathetic to Klocek and his scholarly life, the story is neutral in a he said/she said fashion as to what happened in the actual incident during the student fair. It also completely ignores the statements made by Dean Dumbleton that slandered Tom as a bigot, and in which she accepted the students' side of the dispute before hearing from Tom, and subsequently cut off his health insurance, and prohibited him from praying in the DePaul chapel.
The article also makes him out to be a militant Christian of sorts, who is neutral between the Palestinian and Israeli side of the Middle East conflict. Tom was offended by the poster claiming Israel is an apartheid state at the Palestinian group's table, but you won't find that in the article. The article also suggests that John Mauck is defending Klocek only because he is an evangelical Christian, when his firm has a consistent record of defending various religious groups in recent years to protect their rights.
Overall, DePaul is whitewashed, which is unfortunate. There is nothing in the article about any of the other nasty stuff going on at DePaul— the Norman Finkelstein controversy, the Ward Churchill visit, the stifling political correctness. Grossman interviewed Professor Joh Cohen twice, but you would not know from this article that Tom had any support from faculty at DePaul,which he does. DePaul deserved to be hit harder, but this story is more of a human interest profile of Klocek. .
Richard Baehr 12 20 05
