The Chronicle of Higher Education
September 5th, 2014
A group of faculty members at the University of Colorado at Boulder has accused the university’s administration of showing a “blatant disregard for the rights, interests, and well-being of its faculty,” the Daily Camera reports. The harsh statement, by the faculty-affairs committee of the Faculty Assembly, refers to a series of well-publicized disciplinary actions taken against three faculty members in the institution’s sociology and philosophy departments.
Last year Patricia A. Adler, a now-retired sociology professor, was suspended from teaching a course in which she performed a skit on prostitution. The administration later backed down.
Dan Kaufman, a philosophy professor, was placed on leave and barred from the campus for two months, for unspecified reasons, and then reinstated. And the university moved to fire a tenured philosophy professor, David Barnett, after he was accused of retaliating against a female graduate student who alleged that another student had sexually assaulted her.
“These precipitous and punitive actions taken against faculty without due process and then often quickly reversed show that the administration is exercising extremely poor judgment in its handling of faculty affairs,” the committee members wrote. The committee is expected to put the condemnation before the Faculty Assembly next month for discussion.