CAPITOL HILL. Monday, July 9, 2018— Marquette University promptly acted to disassociate itself from a most peculiar outburst of hostility towards an Irish human rights organization with a long history of working for justice and peace in Ireland.

The outburst was perpetrated by Marquette’s own Associate General Counsel, Professor Douglas O. Smith, in an email to Fr. Sean Mc Manus, President of the Capitol Hill-based Irish National Caucus.

Fr. Mc Manus explained: “ I don’t know how Professor Smith got on our Irish Briefings email blasts in the first place, and all he had to do was ask to be removed. Instead, using Marquette’s email account, he unleashed this extraordinary email:’This is a formal request to remove me from all of your email lists. I will take the appropriate legal action if you fail to comply with this request.” Douglas O. Smith  —douglas.smith@marquette.edu’”

Fr. Mc Manus continued: “ Of course, the Irish National Caucus was not going to stand for this type of cyber bullying and threatening conduct. So we released two Press Releases on the matter, which were widely disseminated including all of the 311 newspapers in the state of Wisconsin. I was very pleased that Marquette was quick to do the morally right thing, as one would expect from a Jesuit University. I received the following email from the Communication Department of Marquette, unequivocally disassociating itself from Professor Smith’s outburst :