Academic Freedom and Tenure Investigative Reports

Academic Freedom and Tenure: Clarkson College

Report dealing with action taken by the Clarkson College administration in May 1992 to terminate the services of six members of the college's full-time faculty.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: Loma Linda University

Report concerning the dismissal of three faculty members by the administration of Loma Linda University and condition of academic freedom and tenure in general at that university.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: The New Community College of Baltimore

Report concerning the action taken by the administration of the New Community College of Baltimore to terminate a tenured faculty member without cause or due process following an announced termination of tenure commitments with the transfer of the college's control from the city of Baltimore to the state of Maryland.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: Dean Junior College

Report concerning the actions of the administration of Dean Junior College in terminating the services of two faculty members without academic due process.  This action was based significantly on the administration's displeasure with their college activities, involving dissent against the administration, that warranted protection under principles of academic freedom.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: Catholic University of America

This 1989 report involves a Catholic University of America professor who has not been dismissed from his position but who, with conditions imposed upon his teaching that he considers unacceptable, had chosen to take a leave of absence and teach elsewhere. Although the events of primary interest in the case occurred within three years, they can best be understood in the context of a history spanning more than two decades. This case has been the subject of two books and of countless magazine and newspaper articles both in this country and abroad, and aspects of  it have been argued at length before a faculty committee and a superior court; few Association cases, it may be said, have been so widely publicized or so profusely documented. Additionally, the case arose and developed at a university with a governance structure that has no exact counterpart in this country, even among other Catholic institutions.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Report regarding the administration of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary's elimination of the appropriate faculty role in making new appointments and has placed academic freedom in peril at the institution by restricting further faculty appointments to those holding a particular and narrowly construed ideological stance.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: Hillsdale College

1988 Report dealing with the denial of due process and lack of protections of academic freedom at Hillsdale College. The investigating committee concluded that the administration, in declining to provide the faculty member with a statement of the reasons for not reappointing him and in failing to afford opportunity for review by a faculty body of his allegation relating to academic freedom, denied him basic procedural safeguards to which he was entitled under the Association's Statement on Procedural Standards in the Renewal or Nonrenewal of Faculty Appointments. The absence of these procedural safeguards, the committee found, leaves the faculty of Hillsdale College inadequately protected against an improper exercise of administrative power.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: Husson University

This report concerns the action taken by the administration of Husson College (now University) to terminate the services of a professor in his sixth year of full-time service at the college following five years of credited prior service elsewhere. The professor, who had held a concurrent appointment as a division head and had clashed repeatedly with the president over issues of academic and administrative policy, alleged that considerations violative of his academic freedom had contributed significantly to the ad- ministration's decision. The administration stated that its action was necessitated by financial difficulties and the resulting need to eliminate a faculty position in the professor's department. Before the professor's appointment expired, the unexpected departure of a senior colleague created a vacancy in the department which, the investigating committee found, the professor was fully qualified to fill. The administration did not offer the position to him, however, but instead advertised for and recruited a new appointee..

Academic Freedom and Tenure: Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico

This 1987 report describes actions by the administration of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico to suspend and then to dismiss a tenured professor, without any severance salary, once it was informed that she had remarried in a civil ceremony after a previous Catholic marriage had ended, thirteen years earlier, in civil divorce. The administration justified its action by stating that faculty members at the university, which was canonically established by the Holy See, must adhere even in their private lives to the laws of the church, under which the professor's marital life following her civil remarriage was considered to be sinful. At the time of her initial appointment she was warned orally of this constraint but she states that she explicitly refused to acquiesce in it.

Academic Freedom and Tenure: Talladega College

This report deals with actions taken by the administration of Talladega College in late May 1985 to terminate the services of three professors without affording them the protections of due process. Additionally, the administration's actions in these cases, coupled with revised institutional regulations that restrict faculty prerogatives and remove safeguards of academic due process, have left academic freedom in jeopardy at Talladega College.

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