Birds of a Feather at Gonzaga
The University of Missouri’s Melissa Click was fired from her position as professor of communication.. There is good and bad news in this news.
First the good news: It was courageous of the Board of Trustees of the University of Missouri to fire Click. Professor Click was an activist in “Concerned Student 1950,” a group that accused University of Missouri administrators with systemic racism.
When a student reporter attempted to make a video of a Center event, Click attempted to physically block him from taping the event. The student asserted his First Amendment freedom to which Click responded “I get that argument all the time, but you need to go.”
The University of Missouri’s journalism school was founded in 1908 and has made major contributions to the profession of journalism.
Now the first bad news. Melissa Click was a professor in the Department of Communication that features four areas of studies:
Interpersonal and Family Communication
Mediated Communication
Organizational Communication
Political Communication
This politicized curriculum was home to Melissa Click who brought shame upon the University of Missouri. Yet the University itself is responsible for creating a Department of Communication.
The second bad news is that in September Gonzaga University’s Dean of Arts and Sciences, Elisabeth Mermann-Jozwiak, announced that Dr. Click has been retained as a a lecturer for a one year term.
Gonzaga University is representative of the decline of Catholic higher education as it transited from commitment to the Magisterium of the Church into commitment to Social Justice.
Beginning with Pope Pius XI who in Quadragesimo anno incorporated something called Social Justice into the theology of the Catholic Church, Catholic theology became integrated with European socialism. This is a long story that has been analyzed by Thomas Patrick Burke, President of the Wynnewood Institute, and author of The Concept of Justice: Is Social Justice Just?
Based on Gonzaga’s hiring of Melissa Click it is difficult to disguise the fact that Gonzaga is the epitome of a “Catholic” university committed to “Social Justice” and that Melissa Click and Elisabeth Mermann-Jozwiak are birds of a feather who stick together.
