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Professor Awarded Damages in Retaliation Case
A U.S. district court jury awarded $518,000 to a professor at Colorado State University in August after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit decided in March that a dean and the university president violated his free- speech rights. Although the court ordered former CSU business dean Daniel Costello and former CSU president Albert Yates to pay the award, the state of Colorado will pay it, according to newspaper reports.
Myron Hulen, a tenured professor of accounting, argued that he was wrongly transferred out of his department in 1997 after he accused another professor in the department of ethical misconduct, including plagiarizing, taking kickbacks from textbook publishers, and verbally abusing students and staff.
Hulen argued that the transfer was retaliatory and damaged his career because in the new department, for which his qualifications were a poor fit, he had a reduced ability to teach advanced courses, attract research funds, participate in curricular decisions, publish scholarship, receive salary increases, and pursue other professional activities. Hulen also asserted that the transfer violated his First Amendment rights and deprived him of a property interest in his original department. He received a grant from the AAUP's Academic Freedom Fund in support of his litigation of these issues.
In a ruling that cited the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, issued jointly by the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges (now the Association of American Colleges and Universities), the three-judge panel found that Costello and Yates violated Hulen's First Amendment rights. The court also found that Hulen did have a property interest in the department from which he was transferred.
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