I am troubled by last week’s opinion piece “Klocek must go, thank you DPU” that once again ignores Tom Klocek’s side of the story.

I first learned of the incident in The DePaulia where it was reported that Klocek, an instructor in the School for New Learning (SNL), had been suspended after students complained about their argument with him at a student activities fair. As I read the article, I looked for the offending remarks. There were a lot of quotes indicating sharp political differences over a number of hotly disputed issues but nothing to indicate that it involved ethnic or religious prejudice.

Concerned that the school had overreacted, I got in touch with Professor Klocek to hear his side of the story and, not surprisingly, Tom’s version differed from the students’...

...Part-timers are a financial bonanza for the university. They receive about $3000 for a course for which students pay $2000 each. Tom Klocek worked as a part-timer at DePaul for fourteen years and was by all accounts a fine teacher with an unblemished record. When asked, he taught a night course at the Naperville campus even though it meant getting home well after midnight. He did this without complaint.

There is nothing in his background that indicates that he was a prejudiced person. In my conversations with him I never detected bias against Muslims or any other group. He had the misfortune of getting into a heated argument with a group of students passing out anti-Israel literature. For that he was removed from the classroom, deprived of his livelihood, publicly branded a racist, and a fourteen year career of service to DePaul was abruptly suspended, all without being given a reasonable opportunity to present his side of the story.

DePaul should have tried reconciliation rather than recrimination. The students are not terrorists, Tom Klocek is not a bigot and the Dean of SNL is not an ogre. But because of the way this whole mess was mishandled a lot of people will end up believing they are.