Had he been convicted?
Firing somebody for a non-work related crime-wouldn’t that be something like a civil rights violation, though?
Also, had he been convicted of a crime? Charged?
These are the same arguments that I had about a PS professor at my university who hated Reagan. He hated him. Totally reprehensible behavior, telling of what Reagan did that he didn’t like. The man was unbalanced. Unfortunately, there was no way we could get him fired, even though it showed a complete disconnect from reality.
Good question. If he wasn’t charged with a crime, why not?
It’s complex. Bringing the university into disrepute is not a cause for firing. The purpose of tenure is to protect people who hold unappealing views. A geologist could not be fired in 1950 for believing in moving continents, but that was held to be ridiculous and would hold the university up to ridicule. Harassing the parents was certainly disreputable and possibly criminal, but unless he was tried and convicted, it is not a firing offense. But everywhere professors are required to file annual reports on outside activities. I had to even though they were only unremunerated things like refereeing and being a journal editor. I probably would have only been reprimanded had I refused, but the point is, I could in principle have been fired.
Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I’m only addressing the issue of tenure here and its purpose in academics. As someone who likes the free market, more or less, if someone was working for my company and posted stuff that made my company look bad, yeah, I’d fire 'em in a heartbeat.
That gets real close to the Red Scare days: Are any of your friends or acquaintances on this list?
Associating with someone with reprehensible views constitutes endorsing them. Only comprehensive shunning is good enough for those with reprehensible views.
And where does unpopular shade into reprehensible?
Do we really have to go through that process as a society after watching what it’s done time and again in otherwise civilized countries including our own?
The nice part about this particular nutso is he’s so far out there he’s easy to ignore & ridicule. We don’t need his university’s stamp of disapproval to know he’s a whack job.
What was the nature of this harassment? The only contact between him and any of the victim’s families I heard about was initiated by the parents. While his response was reprehensible on multiple levels, I don’t think you can hang a harassment charge on him for responding to someone else contacting him.
If there’s more to ghe harassment then the incident I read about, obviously this doesn’t apply.
It would really be nice if we could ever have a discussion about stuff on here without people reaching for the most inane possible reasons to defend the most deplorable people.
There is nothing remotely like the Red scare here. The premise of the red scare was stupid (that having socialist views meant you’d betray your country) and the actual determinations were inaccurate–the people in question generally weren’t socialist.
This is one man who did one thing. There is no denying he did it. And there is a connection between someone who believes in completely disprovable conspiracy theories and their in ability to teach.
And there is no line between unpopular and reprehensible. They aren’t on the same axes. Speech that is reprehensible is such because of the pain it causes others. This speech is generally less popular, but only because most people don’t want to hurt others. I have said plenty of unpopular things that hurt absolutely no one. I won’t apologize for those. I have said things that hurt other people–those get an apology.
One is wrong, the other isn’t.
Yeah, this. As described, he makes a public claim, the parents contact him and tell him to remove incorrect info, he sends a response letter saying “prove it.”
Now, the nature of the claim and the response certainly makes this behavior reprehensible and assholish, but I doubt it’s harassment, legally.
I’m also not a fan of the bullshit end-run around tenure. This guy wasn’t really fired for failure to file a form. He was fired for being an embarrassingly public asshole. The whole point of tenure is to protect just such embarrassingly wrong speech. If you want to fire people for being assholes, then don’t offer them tenure.