One year ago today on a cold day at DePaul University's Lincoln Park campus, a press conference was held to draw attention to the plight of suspended DPU Professor Thomas Klocek. About six months prior to that date, the professor attempted to defend Israel from spurious attacks against Israel by some Muslim students there. The "Jews are worse than Nazis" type of stuff.The students--unaccustomed to having their extremist views challenged--ran to the DePaul administration to complain, and Klocek, after 15 unblemished years as an adjunct there, was tossed out by DePaul.
The timing of the press conference turned out to be poor. Local news was dominated by the then-unsolved murders of the husband and mother of Federal Judge Joan Lefkow in their home the day before. As it was cold that day, Klocek had a tough go of it being bound and gagged during the press conference. He's since told me that he should have dressed warmer.
Only ABC 7 Chicago covered the press conference. I caught the tail end of the report while leaving work that day, the online report is no longer on that TV station's web site, but it is available here.
But Channel 7's news story was enough for this story to escape beyond the campuses of DePaul. I made a post on my then-new Marathon Pundit blog--and the seed of the tale of what another DePaul professor calls "political correctness run-amok" was out the Chicago school's walled garden.
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 1, 2005: My first posting on the Klocek case.
Later that night, Michelle Malkin became the first big blogger to cover the Klocek story.
About two weeks later, the Chicago Jewish News published this excellent account of the what happened in the cafeteria at DePaul's downtown campus between Klocek and the Muslim students.
On March 19, 2005 Roger L. Simon, another big blogger weighed in.
The next day, mega-blogger Little Green Footballs made the Klocek case its "Outrage of the Day." Many LGF visitors, 447 of them in fact, added comments to the Klocek posting.
The story was now everywhere in the blogosphere. Since then, Simon, Malkin, LGF, and Marathon Pundit all became part of Pajamas Media.
On March 22, Israeli Professor Steven Plaut published the first of his several articles about Klocek and DePaul. Plaut brought up DePaul's resident holocaust minimizer, Norman Finkelstein, in that column. Yes, Klocek, who defended Israel is gone from DePaul, but there is a professor who the Anti-Defamation League called a holocaust denier among the DePaul faculty.
Around this time, Jay Ambrose of the Scripps Howard News Service wrote several columns about Klocek. Here is one of them, "A Question of Decency." Ambrose e-mailed me recently that he is still closely watching the Klocek case.
Chicago writer Richard Baehr has been a great supporter of Thomas Klocek, his well-circulated American Thinker piece hits DePaul hard.
Associated Press joined in on May 14, in this article by Nicole Dizon. It was published by many news sources--this reprint is from FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. That organization has been very supportive of Professor Klocek--and equally tough on DePaul.
Klocek filed his defamation suit against DePaul a month later.
On June 20, the Klocek case was briefly mentioned on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor.
September 15 marked the first anniversary of Professor Klocek's discussion with the Muslim students at DePaul.
On October 10, John J. Miller's detailed account of the Thomas Klocek case appeared in the National Review.
Later that month, the hero of the extreme left, Ward Churchill spoke at DePaul. Churchill was paid about $5,000 for a 90 minute speech at the school's Lincoln Park campus to exercise his free speech rights. We all know what happened to Klocek when he tried to express his....
Ward Churchill's visit to DePaul gave the Klocek story new momentum in the blogosphere, as this press release points out.
Churchill's appearance, ironically, took place just a few hundred yards from the site of the Klocek press conference.
On December 20, 2005, millions of blogging keystrokes later, the Chicago Tribune became the first--and still only--major Chicago daily newspaper to report on the Klocek case.
There is plenty more "out there" in the blogosphere about Professor Klocek and DePaul, as the reader will learn by typing "Klocek" and "DePaul" into any internet search engine. See what you find.
Technorati tags: Thomas Klocek DePaul Illinois Academic freedom Chicago blogging Ward Churchill Joan Lefkow Pajamas Media
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