A petition protesting the firing has now been signed by hundreds of other faculty members across the country and around the world. 2023 jewish telegraphic agency all rights reserved. If a person walks up and punches a student in the face, youre telling me I need to go convene a group of people before I take any action against them?. Related Stories Alumni push for change at Linfield University amid allegations of harassment, misconduct. But no such corollary exists for faculty and students should not be subject to such a bizarre policy. One of those trustees resigned in 2019 and has been charged with sexual abuse. Click here! This is simply not how tenure works. On Thursday, he recalled discussing the physical characteristics of Jews and Arabs and making the point that this portrayal of Shylock with the hook nose is just ludicrous.. YouTubes privacy policy is available here and YouTubes terms of service is available here. said Dr. Davis had contacted it last month with concerns about racial bias. According to the school spokesman, Baca purposefully sat next to Jubb at the bar in 2019 when he learned the student-trustee also had gone there with Jubb and other trustees. But he pushed back hard on the allegations surfaced recently by Pollack-Pelzner. The Oregon Board of Rabbis called on Dr. Davis and Mr. Baca to resign. The university respects that individuals are free to express their opinions on social media, but that doesnt make them accurate, Nelson said. Finally, the President said that people like me were destroying [Linfield] from within and could only show loyalty by accepting the teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, Pollack-Pelzner tweeted. I promised my students and colleagues that I would heed their concerns and make sure that people in positions of power would not violate their power, he said. In a statement, the university said Dr. Pollack-Pelzner had been fired for cause., He has engaged in conduct that is harmful to the university; deliberately violated instructions to preserve the attorney-client privilege, and deliberately circulated false statements about the university, its employees and its board and refused to comply with university policies, the statement said. That includes the dismissal of Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, which occurred in the middle of a Zoom meeting at Linfield University without him being granted any hearing or due process. These are real issues that Linfield has to deal with, and I understand the impulse to blame the messenger and claim that the harm is in the act of reporting rather than whats being reported, but Im hopeful that if we continue to shed a light on these abuses of power that that will allow us eventually to be able to rebuild and heal, Pollack-Pelzner said. Allegations of Anti-Semitism at Linfield The university's ongoing sexual misconduct scandal involving trustees is a two-headed monster, now that one faculty trustee says he faced anti-Semitism for pushing for reform. Linfield Universitys actions are a crystal-clear violation of its own policy on firing a tenured professor for cause. The dismissal of a tenured faculty member for cause, the handbook says, must relate to the fitness of faculty members in their professional capacities as teachers or researchers, not to their generation of bad publicity for the college. Its overwhelming, its destabilizing its an attack on the values of higher education that I have worked so hard with colleagues to uphold, he said. Here, you'll find full details on how to place either request. Pollack-Pelzner whose case has become a cause celebre among American academics did not agree to speak with the NAACP for its investigation, and the report does not substantively address his termination or his allegations, relying instead on the independent investigation that could not substantiate them. About a month after his widely shared Twitter thread, Pollack-Pelzner was let go so abruptly that he learned of it only when he was locked out of Linfields email system. Durch Klicken auf Alle akzeptieren erklren Sie sich damit einverstanden, dass Yahoo und unsere Partner Ihre personenbezogenen Daten verarbeiten und Technologien wie Cookies nutzen, um personalisierte Anzeigen und Inhalte zu zeigen, zur Messung von Anzeigen und Inhalten, um mehr ber die Zielgruppe zu erfahren sowie fr die Entwicklung von Produkten. Davis is Linfields first Black president, and the report said that since 1970, no Black people have been elected as faculty trustee or faculty executive chair. The Chronicle conducted interviews with Linfields dissembling leadership as they frantically grasp for any credible explanation for why they terminated a tenured faculty member with no process a severance so quick that the professor learned of his termination because he got an auto-response from his own email address explaining that Daniel Pollack-Pelzner is no longer an employee of Linfield University.. The only major offered is Nursing. Linfield is inventing policies on the fly to justify its retaliation against a tenured faculty member. Fill out the form below to receive personalized communications or close this window to continue. Linfield served as Dean of Women from 1921 to 1928, and sat on the Board of Directors from 1922 to her death in 1940. The outside investigator found the faculty members report to be substantiated by a preponderance of the evidence, but said that it did not rise to the level of violating Linfields harassment or Title IX policy. You will complete approximately one-third of your courses in the core. Fr nhere Informationen zur Nutzung Ihrer Daten lesen Sie bitte unsere Datenschutzerklrung und Cookie-Richtlinie. Lost your password? gave support to his account of racial bias, releasing a report that praised Dr. Daviss leadership and said he had been subjected to unfair personal attacks because of his race. The AAUP released the report of an investigating committee on the dismissal of Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, a tenured English professor and endowed chair in Shakespeare studies at Linfield University in Oregon. The justifications offered by Linfields leadership to the Chronicle are incoherent. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement, Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement, and Your Privacy Choices and Rights (each updated 1/26/2023). Both students and faculty members have repeatedly called on Baca to step down over Linfields handling of sexual misconduct reports by students against David Jubb, a former trustee who is facing a criminal trial. Dr. Davis said those accusations and others were being rehashed by professors unhappy with his restructuring of the university after years of declining enrollment. Dr. Vivian Ann (Johnson) Bull of Madison, New Jersey, a former college president and professor, and a recognized authority on the Middle East economic issues, died Aug. 12. The Save Our Linfield nonprofit has raised more than $10,000 for a legal defense fund for . There is a jury trial scheduled for that case in November. Promising to be open about budget cuts, he quoted a former professor of his who used to make the analogy, You dont send the Jews to the shower with soap, Dr. Linder said. If this is what Linfield wants its faculty standards to look like, one would not need to look far to see how it will be abused.). Linfields administration does not get to pick and choose between the policies it has and the policies it wishes it had. Editors Note: This story has been updated to include information about investigations of sexual harassment at Linfield, based on summaries provided to OPB after the story originally published. All Ive been trying to do for the last two years is to get Linfield leadership to follow its own policies. Linfield University, a liberal arts college in Oregon, claims repeatedly in its faculty handbook to honor academic freedom. Linfields faculty handbook requires a lengthy process, including two formal hearings, before a professor with tenure can be fired procedures that have not been followed in this case. No competent university leader could credibly believe that tenured faculty are at-will employees. Instead, he said, it was the result of Pollack-Pelzners having made a number of statements that were blatantly false. The example he cited is the professors stating, in a recent email to Linfield faculty members, that Jubb, the former trustee, faced eight felony counts. David Baca, longtime chair of Linfield Universitys Board of Trustees, said this week that hes stepping down. Condemnation from parents, alumni and a national educational organization followed almost immediately after Linfield University fired tenured English professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner in a rare. Linfield University. Additionally, the ADL encouraged Linfield leadership to attend trainings on bias and antisemitism. If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. And theres been a total lack of accountability on the part of the school to take responsibility for whats happened and to engage in an honest conversation.. Davis told the Chronicle of Higher Education that the schools faculty handbook had not been updated and said a number of things in that handbook that are not valid. He added that Our legal representation feels very comfortable with the basis for his termination.. Baca said he met at length with Motis when she raised her complaint in 2019 and he banned Jubb from attending the next board meeting while he began a process to remove him as trustee. In his recent statement, Baca said his email to trustees announcing Jubbs resignation was supposed to be a private note., For those who expected me to publicly denounce Mr. Jubb, I would remind them that there had not been an investigation and there were no findings. It has even pitted the N.A.A.C.P., which has cited racial bias in the accusations against Dr. Davis, against the Anti-Defamation League, which has joined in calls for Dr. Daviss resignation. But the committee disclosed that a faculty member in February accused one trustee of inappropriate touching of the shoulder and another trustee of inappropriate touching of the leg. The committee didnt name the trustees and said an outside investigator is looking into the complaint. Throughout a controversy that has resulted in two separate no-confidence votes, Davis and the board that supports him have behaved like petty tyrants, altering the colleges governance structure, suspending mass faculty emails, and insisting that all broad correspondence be vetted by the vice president of finance and administration. The firing, previously reported by The Oregonian, has added to the extraordinary turmoil at Linfield, which was founded in 1858 as a Baptist college and offers liberal arts, business and nursing programs. Pioneer Hall on the Linfield University campus in McMinnville, Ore. Her gift included real estate in Spokane, Washington, valued at $250,000 (a sum worth nearly $4 million in 2020). Rabbi Eve Posen, president of the Oregon Board of Rabbis, told JTA that the Oregon Board of Rabbis is interested and would be more than happy to work with the NAACP, but did not elaborate. (JTA) In the latest developments in an ongoing controversy at Linfield University over the firing of a tenured Jewish professor who accused the school of anti-Semitism, a report from the. Dr. Pollack-Pelzner, who was hired by the university in 2010 and has written about theater and the arts as a contributor for The New York Times, said he had been fired without a hearing or any of the other due process protections normally granted to tenured faculty members. Resources for faculty and staff from our partners at Times Higher Education. A group of Stanford faculty are publicly objecting to a campus harm reporting system they say chills campus speech. Linfield University canceled faculty Listservs over the weekend, sparking faculty cries of censorship. Sign up to get important news and culture from around the Northwest, delivered to your inbox six days a week. Be a part of it! Its retaliatory in the extreme.. Maxine Bernstein | The Oregonian/OregonLive, told the newspaper in May that the school failed to intervene as promised, Jubb is accused of sexually abusing student-trustee AnnaMarie Motis. Pollack-Pelzner tweeted that after he passed on misconduct reports, he faced comments related to his religion from the head of the human resources department and the board chair, and he had also heard President Davis talk about measuring the size of Jewish noses. In addition, Pollack-Pelzner said that Davis told him people were overreacting to swastikas that had appeared on campus. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which aims to defend student and faculty freedom of speech on campus, sent a letter to Davis on Thursday night demanding that he reverse Pollack-Pelzners termination, condemning what it called reckless conduct., The Shakespeare Association of America also backed Pollack-Pelzner, who teaches about Shakespeare, writing,Whistleblowers should not be punished and anti-semitism and other forms of racism should be condemned., A 2018 photo of the Linfield University campus in McMinnville, Ore. (George Rose/Getty Images). She singled out Baca for criticism, saying the schools general counsel told her that Baca gave his word that David Jubb would never have contact with students again or be allowed at events that served alcohol.. Learn with FIRE provides learners with the opportunity to take courses on a wide range of topics, including free speech and due process, designed by our expert staff. Dr. Pollack-Pelzner said he had taken the letter as a personal attack, adding that he had been ordered not to talk about sexual misconduct outside of executive session and had then been banned from attending the sessions and finally fired after speaking out on Twitter. In a June 17, 2019, email to board members, Baca wrote that Jubb, 71, had advised him he was resigning due to health concerns. Baca cited Jubbs valuable service to the board and the College and urged gratitude for his positive contributions.. Theres a reaction to change, he said. ( JTA) Linfield University, a small school in Oregon, has fired a Jewish professor who accused the university president of making antisemitic remarks. Additionally, the ADL encouraged Linfield leadership to follow its own policy on firing a tenured professor for.. Their opinions on social media, but that doesnt make them accurate, Nelson said opinions. Administration does not get to pick and choose between the policies it and! 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