I posted about this on my own blog this morning, but I thought I’d post this here since it takes a slightly different approach to the matter: “University Fires Professor Who Mooned,” from Inside Higher Ed. Here’s the opening paragraphs, with various links:
Becoming a YouTube star by mooning a room of students and professors doesn’t exactly provide job security for a professor without tenure.
If there was any doubt about that, Fort Hays State University cleared it up Friday when it dismissed Bill Shanahan as assistant professor of communications and debate coach. The university acted after a video posted on YouTube showed Shanahan exchanging four-letter words, jumping up and down, and dropping his pants in an extended argument with a debate coach from the University of Pittsburgh. While the altercation took place in March, the video surfaced only this month — and it has attracted thousands of views, prompted debate, and inspired some to set the incident to music.
The video is worth watching, though it probably falls into the “NSFW” category because of the many f-bombs being thrown back and forth.
In any event, I post this here because of the Fort Hays State faculty union response:
Richard Hughen, a professor of philosophy at Fort Hays State and also president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors (which is the faculty union there), said that the incident raised multiple issues. “It should be clear that a faculty member can be dismissed for unprofessional behavior,” he said, adding that it was “pretty obvious that Dr. Shanahan did not exercise appropriate restraint nor did he show respect for the opinions of others in this incident.”
But even if there may be grounds for dismissing Shanahan, that doesn’t mean the president should be making the decision himself, he said. “Dr. Shanahan had a right to have a hearing by his peers to see if his colleagues agree that his behavior — perhaps accumulative behaviors — justified his dismissal,” he said. The faculty union should have been involved and it was “an affront” to it that the AAUP did not play a role, Hughen said, adding that it would be “premature” to announce any action the organization might take as a result.
I don’t know about this. Call me reactionary here, but is it a good idea for the faculty union to coming to the defense of this guy? If something like this happened here at EMU– hey, we do have a very successful forensics team– would the EMU-AAUP make such a defense?
Hypothetically, of course. I’m not planning on any mooning anytime soon.
As a former EMU Forensicator, and current grad student at Shanahan’s alma mater (Roll Tide!), I have to say that this video really did give me pause. I’m glad that the institution in question terminated his contract. Shanahan has brought shame on the speech and debate community, and it’s really sad that the biggest story about speech and debate in a while is something like this. Thankfully, I can say in all honesty that I doubt anyone associated with the EMU Forensics Team (or, for that matter, my new home with the Alabama Forensic Council) would ever act in such an inappropriate manner. The fact that the faculty union turned out to blindly support Shanahan is bewildering, and also rather short-sighted. This man has brought shame on our community, and his dismissal is something we should be glad about.
Richard, I fully agree with your comments that it is unimaginable that anyone associated with EMU’s forensics team would engage in anything like the unprofessional conduct of this Ft Hayes State coach. But it is not accourate to say that the faculty union president at that campus “blindly support[ed]” the offending coach. All the AAUP president at Ft Hayes said was that it’s questionable for a university professor to fire the coah, on his own, without any input from a faculty body charged with investigating the matter. This is not a minor principle: Where do you draw the line at what a president can fire a professoor for, without any due process or set procedure or standards of evidence? What if the same events that are on video were merely reported to have happened, but there was no video and conflicting eyewitness testimony? Strong enough to merit firing? Where do you draw the line? Why not allow the president to unilaterally make all employment decisions? The answer is plain: Doing so is harmful to the interests of higher education, and injurious to the principle of due process and immensely hostile to the core value of any genuine University — academic freedom.
The “Red Book” — the publication that has for 6 decades defined academic freedom and the procedures needed to protect it — is pretty clear: Cases of credible charges of professional misconduct by faculty members must be heard by a panel made up of faculty members, and that panel’s recommendations and findings must be considered by administrators before firing a professor or imposing discipline. Otherwise, all faculty would be at the mercy of administrators who could act without any standards whatsoever, and there’d be no academic freedom in the classroom or in the lab.
That said, this guy Shanahan’s conduct seems inexcusable. So investigate it, issue a report, then act: that’s due process. The president of Ft Hayes would have been on stronger ground if he’d shown good sense, put Shanahan on a paid suspension while a panel was convened, facts determined, and recommendations presented.
And isn’t it at least hypothetically possible that there are extenuating circumstances that would mitigate against the conclusions that firing is the appropriate response? What if he was suffering some kind of psychological breakdown that, while undiagnosed then, could be diagnosed and treated? Just a hypothetical — but in such a case, the president’s hasty actions would make his institution liable for a variety of claims.
One personal note: My comments here are informed, in a general way, by my two years plus experience as a Grievance Officer of the EMU-AAUP. During that time, I lost no cases (a record unmatched in chapter history), but did represent 2 faculty members who were wrongly recommended for denial of tenure by the Dept Head and Dean (but they won tenure thru the grievance process). I also represented two faculty members who the Provost put on paid suspension due to alleged – but entirely unfounded and at the point of suspension, uninvestigated – misconduct; both were entirely vindicated. What all four of these cases have in common is that each of the faculty members’ troubles originated in having been outspoken and active in pursuit of their professional duties in the areas of research or service: In other words, they annoyed some administrator or adminstrator, and those officials took actions that could have become career-destroying. All four are today valued members of the EMU tenured faculty, having had their rights protected by the grievance process…and these cases are hardly typical of faculty-management relations at EMU, but do you seen the relevance here, Richard, to the case of the Ft Hayes forensics coach? The relevance is that due process is relevant to any decision to terminate an employee for alleged misconduct, and in a university, academic freedom is relevant too. Since the case seems strong enough to discipline or even fire the coach, a properly constituted due process might have sufficed to achieve the president’s aim; and if the case isn’t in fact that strong, well, then it’s even worse for Ft Hayes that the president ignored the standard practices of American higher education.
Academic freedom and due process are values too precious and rare on this earth to allow them to be ignored just because some evidently foolish coach engages in an act of stupid unprofessionalism. Let him have his day before a faculty panel, and there is less risk of him and his institution ending up in court.
Admittedly, my post here is overlong and draws on esoteric knowledge of how universities work — but i think the principles are sound. I did not look up any points of law, and welcome critiques from whatever lawyerly types may still lurk in EMUTalk land.
Please excuse my earlier comment. I simply misread. Having gone back to review the article, I completely agree with you. Thanks for drawing my attention to this error of judgment!