Marquette president hits and runs

After receiving a copy of the message/statement from Marquette University president Mike Lovell that John has parsed in the adjacent post, I wrote senior director of university communications Lynn Griffith at the address indicated in the message:

Dear Ms. Griffith: I am one of four partners in and contributors to the site Power Line. We have received a copy of the statement sent out by President Lovell to the board of trustees early yesterday evening. In that statement it is asserted that Power Line “is not a reputable news source and its main intention seems to be clickbait and advertising…” I believe this statement to be false and defamatory. This is to request that President Lovell promptly retract it. Short of that, I would like you to provide the factual basis on which the statement was made.

Insofar as you are identified as the institutional contact on the statement, I ask you for your response to this message by the close of business today.

I wrote Griffith this morning from my personal account account as well as our Power Line account. Of course, we heard nothing from Griffith. President Lovell has therefore not only disparaged the student who had the misfortune of accepting Marquette’s invitation to attend the university, he has falsely defamed Power Line, all in the name of the “Catholic, Jesuit institution” he leads and has now disgraced.

This is one leader whose crisis management consultants appear to be unfamiliar with the law of holes. A victim of bad advice from these consultants, Lovell also lacks the character to deal with the issues in anything approaching a straightforward manner on his own.

The College Fix has now appended this editor’s note to its original story on Samantha Pfefferle: “After publication Tuesday, Pfefferle reached out to The College Fix and said that the school on Monday finally told her it would not revoke her admissions. Campus officials still have not responded to numerous requests from The Fix for comment.” It’s probably just as well.

Howie Carr caught up with Ms. Pfefferle in the third hour of his program yesterday. I have embedded that hour in podcast form below. Compare and contrast rising freshman Samantha Pfefferle speaking in her own voice with the bland institutional weasel words of the president of Marquette University. What a disgrace.

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