An interesting confluence of events occurred this week that will probably fly under the media radar.

Ben Cohen reports that Marquette University has begun proceedings aimed at depriving political science professor John McAdams of tenure – and presumably firing him – for discussing an academic matter without permission of the Department of Truth. McAdams put up a blog item concerning how Cheryl Ablate, a grad student instructor, had forbade any opposition to gay marriage in her classroom while also targeting a student who complained about this policy. The standard justification for tenure – that it enables academics to address controversial topics without fear of retribution – is apparently no longer operative at Marquette.

Almost simultaneously, the Washington Post published a hit piece by David Farenthold attacking Gov. Scott Walker for, among other things, failing to graduate from college. The institution that Walker left was none other than… Marquette University.  

There’s no causation here, of course – Walker could not foresee in the early 90s that Marquette would eventually turn fascist. But there is a connection all the same. A left-wing college abuses its authority while breaking its own rules (I guess they didn’t read their Alinsky) in order to punish dissent, while a former student who has survived many similar leftist forays into the politics of destruction sets out on the path to the White House. What clearer illustration of the current political dichotomy could there be?

The Hungarian-American historian John Lukacs once wrote that coincidences mean something because we feel that they do. I’m not at all certain what this episode of synchronicity means, but I know that I like it.