Marquette University faculty is demanding to know why their president, Father Robert Wild, withdrew a major job offer to an openly gay professor from Seattle. A faculty member who attended the meeting told NewsBuzz that Wild informed a roomful of senior faculty members that Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki influenced his decision to withdraw it. Listecki has a reputation as a bishop who aggressively enforces traditional Catholic doctrine.
Wild met with department chairs in the College of Arts and Sciences after he announced that Jodi O’Brien, who is currently on sabbatical from Seattle University, also a Jesuit Catholic university, wouldn’t become their next dean as expected. The revelation ignited a firestorm of criticism. Students and faculty speculated that pressure from university donors, the school’s Board of Trustees or even Catholic officials prompted Wild’s sudden reversal.
According to one chair who spoke on condition of anonymity, Wild told the professors attending the meeting, “The Archbishop had expressed an opinion on the matter that had a considerable bearing on his opinion.” The chair says professors asked Wild “to give an account of how the decision was made,” particularly the Archbishop’s involvement, but the president wouldn’t describe the process in detail.
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