What are the real world limits of what you can say as a tenured University Professor and not be fired? Could you express racist and/or homophobic opinions?
When I was at Northwestern University, one of the professors was a Holocaust denier. There was a pretty constant effort to get him fired, but since he had tenure, it was unsuccessful.
That said, his field was Electronic Engineering, at which he was apparently an excellent teacher (I never took any of his classes), so it wasn’t like he was a History or Political Science professor.
So that is one data point.
Completely depends on many factors, especially the university itself, how the professor in question is funded, signs of the times, and personalities involved. YMMV; I’m a uni brat. In other words, one thing one person at one place could say at one time and get fired, but other things or persons or places or times would be OK.
Do you have an example to ask about?
The protection of tenure is pretty complete. I personally know a prof who had an ongoing affair with one of his graduate students, left his wife, shacked up with her, etc. etc.
The university would LOVE to get rid of him but unless he fails to maintain his appointment, they’re stuck with him.
It is changing rapidly. Many U’s are instituting various kinds of “post-tenure review” programs. They are ostensibly about ‘performance’ but clearly arising to deal with Ward Churchill-type situations.
I’m sure if you went to the Chronicle of Higher Ed and searched on “post-tenure review” you’d find a lot of stuff.
There are some things that allow you to fire tenured professors (for instance, conviction of a felony). At our school, a tenured professor was asked to leave after stealing a college credit card and using it to gamble. I believe he cut a deal to resign and the school wouldn’t press charges, but if he had been convicted, they could have fired him – after a hearing.
Tenure basically means that the school must go through a process to show you’re an incompetent teacher or that you behaved unprofessionally. You’d have to make a strong case for it, however, and it’d be very difficult to do it for someone solely because of his opinions (which is the main reason there is tenure in the first place – so that faculty can express themselves without fear of petty retaliation).
OK. If a professor, with tenure, plagerized to complete an article, is he still protected?
Again, it depends on the policies of the institution. But since plagiarism and lack of academic integrity are the A1 major no-nos in academia, he’d likely be toast. However, there would be endless academic integrity committees investigating the matter and probably a wrongful termination lawsuit if he was booted. In my estimation, the university would probably offer a monetary settlement as a quid pro quo for a clean break.
Of course, all of the above is speculation (except for the endless rounds of committee meetings…we do love the committees) and the individual institutions would vary in how they’d handle in in regard to their specific policies.
CapnPitt, who is currently in the second year of a six year tenure track.
My undergraduate mentor did all of the above. He also gave me pornographic tapes to watch my senior year of college. He also had huge parties at his house and once, when a few people including me, were drunk as shit, he showed me how to grope a female student and then had me do it. He was a psychopharmacology professor and explained to me, how the more you drove drunk, the better you got at it.
It sounds bad when it is written out but he was (and still is) one of the most decorated teachers at my university (Tulane). He is one of the few decorated professors they have on robes to sit on the stage at graduation. He slept with at least one undergraduate female who is now a doctor and other female students flocked to him. He divorced his wife to live with a graduate student. It would be a shame for anything to happen to him because of that because he is a truly talented professor. I made a ‘B’ on one of his mid-terms and he was pissed beyond belief and refused to speak to me.
He explained that I needed a 100% on his final to get an ‘A’ in his advanced psychopharmacology class and no one had ever done that. I studied for days on end because of his pressure and I got the the highest grade he ever recorded, 103%, with the extra credit questions. He is a brilliant educator so his unorthodox lifestyle and teaching technique needs to be ignored.
A well-publicized recent case was that of Ward Churchill at the University of Colorado, alluded to by Key Lime Guy above.
Churchill, a tenured professor, attracted widespread negative attention by an essay he wrote after 9/11, saying that the attack was brought on by US imperialism and comparing its victims to Adolph Eichmann.
Churchill had been accused of research misconduct before, but official charges were filed in 2005:
Churchill was fired on the basis of this misconduct. However, if he hadn’t stirred up such a firestorm he might not have ever been investigated.
Honestly I think it would depend if he had a flunky that s/he could pin it on. If it could be proven that there was academic dishonesty then they might be gone, but I certainly don’t think it would be a forgone conclusion.
I know of more than one (sadly) graduate students who plagerized entire passages out of their MSc or PhD thesises (I have no idea how to pluralize that) who’ve gone on to have careers in medicine.
I know a physician who falsified ALL of the data he included in a CIHR grant application - he was busted and fired from the University (he was NOT tenured) but still has a thriving medical practice.
These examples aren’t exactly what the OP was asking about, but they are illustrative of some of the passess that academics get that wouldn’t fly in the real world.
Most unis have a “moral turpitude” clause that allows the institution to revoke tenure in the case of really bad behavior (committing a major crime, academic misconduct). But simply having unpopular ideas and voicing them isn’t enough to lose tenure over. That, in fact, is the entire point.
A tenured prof found to be a plagiarist would be done for, regardless of what the institution would do. As others have stated, you can be a prima donna, you can be a writer of turgid prose, you can do worthless work, you can be boring - but the one thing you can’t be is a cheat. You would never have footing in your field, with professional organizations, and so forth.
The coin of the realm in academia is peer review. If your peers have reason to believe you’re not trustworthy, you will never gain that respect back. Of course, I suppose if you’re the brilliant mind of your time, you might get a second chance, but you’d have to have some pretty extenuating circumstances, one hell of an excuse, and some assurance that the plagiarism was isolated to that one article/book.
My grad school would expel you from the uni for plagiarism on major work, and even work not related to your academic. If it happened early in your career and it was “accidental” you might be able to return in a semester or a year, but there would be an indication on your transcript that you were separated from school at one point. One guy already had his doctorate and it was discovered a few years after he graduated that he plagiarized a large part of this dissertation. The university stripped him of his degree and he was not allowed to call himself a graduate of the university. He then moved abroad and occasionally the school gets word that he is claiming to hold a degree from the institution. He has to totally do this in the shadows because if anyone ever asks the school, they’ll respond that he never graduated.
Wow. As written, that seems remarkably sleazy to me. However, perhaps I’m just slow catching on to a hidden joke, and there exists some redeeming circumstance (such as the female in question being a willing participant in a morality play, perhaps?) that make this anecdote something other than what it appears to be.
Mr. Donald Cuccioletta, a former professor of mine.
I vaguely remember writing a term paper in 2004ish for him on the efforts to legalize marijuana in Canada (I was a pothead at the time).
He told me where in Montreal were the best locations to buy weed when I was asking him some advice on how to organize a few lines of thought in a rough draft.
I saw him on the Canadian national news talking about some scandal in Ottawa a couple years after his being booted from the college… so I guess he was able to keep his reputation, somehow (though it boggles the mind as to how he managed it, if you read the section on his particular antics in copy and paste any freshman would be kicked off a campus in about .03 milliseconds for doing the exact same thing).
The all wanted it and that isn’t a joke. I knew lots of them and it was a fact. He wasn’t the most conventionally handsome man I have known but he was the most genuinely talented player I have seen. It wasn’t like he was doing random, sleazy things to strangers. He had these big parties at his house and then everyone would get so drunk, they succumbed to his style. It isn’t an exact match but think of Howard Stern as a brilliant university professor.
Dating or having sex with students is considered OK in the legalities, but is really, really, really, frowned upon. That is, of course, provided that it’s consensual and the student has reached the age of majority. I think it’s pretty obvious that the power disparity is the big problem, along with potential grading conflicts of interest. I think most universities have a rule saying that you can’t “have relations” with someone you have grading authority over. In other words, he/she should not take any of your classes. Clearly, this doesn’t always happen, but the university always, rightly, tries to cover its butt.
The reason it’s considered OK in the legalities is because you really can’t keep two consenting adults from having a relationship, at whatever level. Again, it’s frowned upon, but not verboten.
ETA: I should say all of the above is just my knowledge from a few institutions. YMMV.
Oh, how to say this in GQ… you’re full of it?
I think I tell some of my stories in the wrong way because they end up with comments like this when they shouldn’t This was in New Orleans where the rules aren’t really the same as the rest of the U.S. We didn’t behave in ways that would be appropriate elsewhere but that didn’t mean anyone got hurt. The parties were wild but everyone was there voluntarily including the coed females (who can think on their own BTW. They don’t need to be constantly protected). The Howard Stern analogy was pretty good. I fail to see the harm unless you grew up in an Amish community. Everyone just had a sometimes bizarre but always great time. That is the way New Orleans culture is.
I think your problem was the word “grope” which strongly implies non-consensual activity. If you want to say “playfully fondle” it might be less objectionable.
The interesting thing is that there ARE men who can grope-fondle-smack asses etc. at parties and otherwise normal women will think it’s the funniest and most playful thing in the world because their entertaining personalities allow them to carry it off. They don’t even need to be very good looking.