Alumni, parents, national group slam Linfield’s firing of professor who raised sex abuse, anti-Semitic allegations
Below is URL for this story. At URL see photos included with the story.
"Silence is not a Solution," one message said. "LISTEN TO
YOUR STUDENTS, STAFF & FACULTY," read another. University staff washed
off the chalk messages Wednesday and informed resident advisers by memo that
"Use of sidewalk chalk must be pre-approved by the Student Activities
Office in McMinnville and must also identify the sponsoring organization."
Failure to remove chalk within a 24-hour period will result in a $25 per day
fine, the memo said.
By Maxine Bernstein, Oregonian, posted
4/28/2021, updated 4/28/2021
Condemnation from parents, alumni and a national educational organization
followed almost immediately after Linfield University fired tenured English
professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner in a rare “nuclear option” without a hearing
as the campus grapples with fallout over sexual abuse and harassment
allegations against board members and alleged anti-Semitic remarks by the
school’s president.
One parent of a Linfield graduate said she’s changing her will “with
sincere and deep regret.”
“I will no longer be bequeathing any sum of money to Linfield University.
Due to the recent firing and the attempt at silencing Professor Daniel
Pollack-Pelzner I cannot in good conscience leave money to Linfield,” wrote
Seattle resident Lise Anderheggen-Leif, whose daughter graduated from the
school in 2014.
The chair of the English Department on Wednesday morning stepped aside
from that role and from his seat on the university’s faculty leadership
council, apparently in protest when the university had no plan for how to cover
for Pollack-Pelzner’s classes and his students’ grades during finals week.
“I have been fielding emails from Daniel’s students. But because I am no
longer chair, I will now be forwarding those inquiries to your office,”
Professor David Thomas Sumner wrote to the dean of the College of Arts and
Sciences, Wednesday morning.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a national campus
civil liberties organization that defends the rights of students and faculty
across the country, called Pollack-Pelzner’s termination “alarming” because the
university did not allow a hearing or any due process as set out in its own
faculty handbook. It sent a letter to the Linfield president, urging him to
rescind the professor’s firing.
“The egregious nature of terminating a faculty critic without process
cannot be overstated, nor can the chilling effect on student and faculty
expression that will follow Linfield’s reckless conduct,” the group’s lawyer,
Adam Steinbaugh, wrote.
The private university based in McMinnville fired Pollack-Pelzner on
Tuesday “for cause,” alleging in a statement that he “propagated false and
defamatory statements,” was “insubordinate” and “interfered with the
university’s administration of its responsibilities.”
Pollack-Pelzner had served as a faculty trustee on Linfield’s board and
publicly complained about the university’s handling of sexual abuse complaints
made by students and faculty against other trustees. He also spoke out this
month, alleging university President Miles K. Davis made anti-Semitic comments
to him while fending off criticism of how the school handled the sexual abuse
complaints.
Davis responded by saying Pollack-Pelzner was engaged in a “smear
campaign” against him.
Two other professors subsequently said they remember Davis making
inappropriate references to Jews and the Holocaust’s gas chambers during a
psychology faculty department meeting in 2018 when he first became president.
Davis said he didn’t remember the statements about the Holocaust but apologized
if his remarks hurt anyone.
The Linfield University faculty handbook says a professor fired for
“cause” has the right to make a defense before an elected faculty hearing
committee and receive a statement of the university’s charges.
But university spokesman Scott Nelson said that doesn’t apply to
Pollack-Pelzner’s case because the firing didn’t result from concerns about the
“responsibilities and duties as a professor,” such as teaching effectiveness,
professional achievement or service, but rather for the stated causes.
Steinbaugh, the attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights in
Education, said Linfield’s method of “skipping out of having any other
oversight,” before firing Pollack-Pelzner amounts to a “big red flag that they
don’t think their arguments would withstand scrutiny.”
“I think this is bogus,” Steinbaugh said, speaking for the foundation. He
does not represent Pollack-Pelzner. “There’s no at-will exception for tenured
faculty. It’s the nuclear option. ... I don’t see this sort of dereliction of
procedure very often.”
Steinbaugh said he hopes Linfield’s accreditor -- the Northwest
Commission on Colleges and Universities -- takes notice. “Their standards say
universities are supposed to avoid conflicts of interest,” he said.
“It is a very obvious conflict of interest to say, ‘Our faculty critic is
wrong and therefore defaming us, and therefore, he’s fired,’” he said.
The last time he recalled a university firing a tenured professor was in
2006, when Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland abruptly fired two without
faculty input -- one who objected to the president’s policies and the other who
had been an adviser to the school’s student paper. That university ended up
reinstating both after the terminations attracted national attention. The
president of Mount St. Mary’s at the time ended up quitting after advocates of
academic and journalistic freedom denounced the firings.
The Anti-Defamation League of the Pacific Northwest issued a call for the
university president to resign “to begin the process of moving forward and
healing on campus.”
“In light of continued media reports of additional antisemitic remarks
attributed to you, faculty no votes of confidence and continued lack of
accountability on the part of the University’s leadership, we believe that a
change in leadership is in the community’s best interest at this time,” league
Regional Director Miri Cypers wrote Wednesday.
Posters that popped up on campus
These posters were found around campus late Tuesday and Wednesday,
drawing on the subject line 'Extraordinary step,' that the Linfield University
provost used to announce Tuesday's firing of Prof. Daniel Pollack-Pelzner.
SCREEN FROZE
Pollack-Pelzner told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he was summoned to a
mandatory meeting at 4 p.m. Tuesday with the provost. He was told it had to do
with his “employment,” he said. When no more information was shared with him,
he said he wanted to bring a lawyer to the meeting but hadn’t yet retained one
and asked that it be postponed. About 1 p.m. Tuesday, he received an email from
the university human resources director that the meeting was canceled, and he’d
receive a FedEx package in the mail the next day.
An hour later, he said was in the middle of a work-related Zoom
conference when the screen froze and he was suddenly disconnected and his
laptop shut down. He tried to restart it but got a message that he no longer
had access to it. He attempted to send an email from his personal address to
his Linfield email address and got a response telling him that he was no longer
employed at the university. That was the first notice he received that he had
been fired, he said.
“It was devastating. I was in shock. I felt unmoored that the school I
devoted myself to for 11 years, that I tried to make safer and more welcoming
would fire me without any explanation or process,” he said. “The truth is
speaking up about abuses of power doesn’t harm Linfield. Abuses of power harm
Linfield, and retaliation against the people who report abuse harm Linfield.”
“Of course, the real losers in this are the students in my class,” he
said.
Among other things, Pollack-Pelzner had criticized how the board chair
and Davis responded to abuse and harassment complaints, including the actions
of former Linfield trustee David Jubb, who has been indicted for allegedly
groping four students in 2019 and 2017. Jubb has pleaded not guilty. Two other
trustees, including Davis, were accused by another faculty member of
inappropriately touching her on her back and shoulders at college functions in
2018 and 2019. Davis and the other trustee denied any wrongdoing, and an
outside investigator hired by Linfield found that while the touching had
happened, it didn’t violate university policy. The faculty passed a
no-confidence vote in Davis earlier this month.
Pollack-Pelzner’s firing immediately caused disarray on campus, leaving
students in his two English courses in the lurch, not knowing where or how to
turn in their final papers, many of which were due Tuesday.
Professor's email shut down
Linfield University students sending in their final papers to their
English professor Tuesday afternoon received this message, "Daniel
Pollack-Pelzner is no longer an employee of Linfield University."
About 27 students between Pollack-Pelzner’s two classes, “Shakespeare Tragedies
& Tragic Comedies” and “Sex, Language & Empire - An Introduction to
British Literature, 1660 to Present,” were stunned to suddenly not be able to
access their professor’s so-called “blackboard” site and have their emails to
his Linfield address bounce back, informing them he was no longer working at
the university.
Some students disturbed by the firing scrawled messages in chalk around
the campus and some posted printed fliers that read: “#NotMyLinfield An
Extraordinary Step in the Wrong Direction.” The message was a play on the
provost’s email to staff announcing the firing, which read: “Extraordinary
Step.”
Lainie Sowell, Linfield’s area director for student success, sent an
email to student residence advisers telling them that they couldn’t use their
position or resources such as paper or crafting materials to make signs or
fliers to “advocate for what you believe in” because they’re student employees
paid by the university. Sowell also reminded them that use of sidewalk chalk
must be pre-approved and failure to remove chalk would result in a $25 a day
fine.
Message to Linfield Resident Advisors
Lainie Sowell, Linfield's area director for student success, cautioned
university resident advisors about using residence advisor resources to speak
out in the wake of the abrupt firing of an English professor.
“Students hung up posters all over campus, and the resident advisers were
ordered to go take them down,” said professor Rachel Norman, a creative writing
instructor and a 2008 Linfield graduate.
“The students are distraught,” Norman said. “I feel so morally and
ethically outraged. When I was a student here, there was an openness about
diversity of ideas, even if you disagreed on things.”
Another parent of a Linfield student said she was outraged that the
firing occurred before the end of the semester and at a stressful time for
students. “Doing this in finals week is unconscionable, with graduation on
Sunday and now students cannot contact DPP (Pollack-Pelzner) as they have
already dismantled his email,” said Stacey M., the parent, who asked that her
full name not be used for fear of retribution against her child.
Paige Barton, a Beaverton resident who works in McMinnville, presented a
petition Tuesday night to the McMinnville City Council that had been signed by
123 people to speak out against Linfield. She said she’s been following the
news coverage of the developments that led up to the firing of Pollack-Pelzner.
“I perceive a willful ignorance and false narrative from university
leadership, and that’s painfully obvious to me. It’s clear also Linfield
students and faculty are suffering in this extremely painful, festering
environment. It’s also clear that their response to these allegations is an
institutional failure of Linfield University,” she told the council via Zoom.
Barton said she didn’t believe Pollack-Pelzner was speaking out in a
“smear campaign.”
“If there’s any student in McMinnville who feels like they may be
sexually harassed in a college campus by a person in a powerful position, it’s
your responsibility to help end it. Please challenge yourself to consider what
Daniel Pollack-Pelzner had to gain from this campaign,” she told the council.
“Please do not allow the university as a powerful institution to damage our
community unchecked.”
By day’s end Wednesday, the executive committee of Linfield University’s
board of trustees issued a statement, saying it supported the administration’s
decision to fire Pollack-Pelzner for cause. “During the past year, the Linfield
community has been harmed by repeated false and divisive statements. It is time
to move forward and focus on the future.”
::::
Linfield University
fires professor who spoke out against sexual misconduct, raised allegations
against president
Below is URL for this story. At URL see
photos included with the story.
By Maxine
Berstein, Oregonian, 4/27/2021, updated 4/28/2021
Linfield University on Tuesday fired
English professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, a public advocate for students and
faculty who had complained about alleged sexual abuse by board trustees.
Pollack-Pelzner, 41, also earlier this
month accused university President
Miles K. Davis of making anti-Semitic comments to fend off
criticism of how the school handled those sexual abuse complaints.
Pollack-Pelzner first shared the allegations on a Twitter thread this month.
The university’s human resources manager summoned Pollack-Pelzner to a 4 p.m. mandatory meeting Tuesday and divulged little about the session, saying only that it regarded his “employment,” according to emails shared with The Oregonian/OregonLive.
An hour later, the school confirmed it had
fired Pollack-Pelzner “for cause,” describing him as “insubordinate” and having
“interfered with the university’s administration of its responsibilities.”
Pollack-Pelzner said he’s consulting a
lawyer and declined comment.
The university said in a statement that the
tenured Shakespeare studies professor, who also served as a faculty trustee,
had “engaged in conduct that is harmful to the university; deliberately
violated instructions to preserve the attorney-client privilege with respect to
information that was entrusted to him in a position of trust and confidence;
deliberately circulated false statements about the university, its employees
and its board; refused to comply with university policies and, in doing so, has
been insubordinate and interfered with the university’s administration of its
responsibilities.”
The firing wasn’t in retaliation for
Pollack-Pelzner speaking out against the president or board chair but for his
“propagated false and defamatory statements,” university spokesman Scott Nelson
and communications consultant Jillian Cohan Martin said by email.
The university’s provost, Susan
Agre-Kippenhan, also sent a message to faculty and students, referencing the
school’s “extraordinary step” of firing a faculty member, alleging “serious
breaches of the individual’s duty to the institution.”
“Linfield unequivocally supports academic
freedom and a diversity of opinion and has resoundingly reinforced the goal of
a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment for all,” the provost wrote. “That
cannot be achieved if individuals abuse their positions of trust and take
deliberate actions that harm the university.”
The subject line of Linfield University
Provost Susan Agre-Kippenhan's message about the professor's firing read:
"Extraordinary step."
Pollack-Pelzner’s allegations led the
Oregon Board of Rabbis last week to call for the resignation of the university
president and board chair for their “mishandling of serious allegations of sexual
harassment” and a “stream of comments insinuating religious bias.” The
Anti-Defamation League’s Pacific Northwest regional director urged the school
to investigate Pollack-Pelzner’s allegations.
According to Pollack-Pelzner, Davis
remarked upon the length of “Jewish noses” in their first one-on-one meeting in
early October 2018. Then last year after Pollack-Pelzner brought sexual
harassment complaints from students and faculty to the board of trustees, he
said Davis suggested divisive people could show loyalty to the private
university with a Baptist heritage only by accepting the teachings of Jesus
Christ in the New Testament.
Davis, who said he is not of the Christian
faith, firmly denied Pollack-Pelzner’s allegations and accused Pollack-Pelzner
of a “smear campaign” against him.
An outside lawyer hired by the university
to investigate Pollack-Pelzner’s allegations couldn’t substantiate the “Jewish
noses,” remark as no other witness was present.
But the lawyer did find that Davis was
upset with Pollack-Pelzner for bringing up the sexual abuse complaints and it
was plausible that Pollack-Pelzner felt he was facing retaliation as a result.
Two Linfield psychology professors,
Jennifer Linder and Tanya Tompkins, then came forward earlier this month and
independently recalled a disturbing comment they said Davis made about Jews and the
Holocaust in a meeting with department staff in late October
2018 shortly after he arrived on campus.
Davis had been talking about transparency
and told faculty at the meeting that they wouldn’t be caught by surprise about
potential staff cuts or other changes, Linder and Tompkins said.
Davis, according to Tompkins, then shared
that a former professor of his once said: “You don’t give Jews soap when you
send them to the showers.” Linder remembered that Davis said: “You don’t send
Jews to the showers with soap.”
The psychology professors said they didn’t
object at the time but brought it up recently because Davis had tried to
discredit Pollack-Pelzner.
Davis said this month said he didn’t recall
making a reference to the Holocaust as alleged during the psychology faculty
meeting. He also said he was sorry if any of his remarks have made people
uncomfortable.
Pollack-Pelzner’s firing drew immediate
rebuke from other faculty, students and alumni.
“I am outraged,” English professor Anna
Keesey said. “He’s a person of high integrity, a star teacher and scholar, and
a whistle-blower on corrupt, ugly behavior on the part of the president and the
chair of the board. He’s a hero. It’s a phenomenally stupid, destructive move,
but it’s what we’ve come to expect. The administration narrative is and has
been for two years a false and self-serving one.”
“I have never seen such extraordinary
violation of due process, academic freedom and retaliation against a faculty
who stood up for JUSTICE,” wrote Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, a Linfield English
professor and colleague of Pollack-Pelzner, on Twitter, Tuesday.
Alumna Kyra Rickards, who graduated in 2014
with an honors degree in English literature, said Pollack-Pelzner was her
honors thesis mentor. She said he was a faculty member who was an integral part
of her Linfield education “and truly stood up for marginalized voices.”
“Shame on you @LinfieldUniv- violating due
process, academic freedom, and for protecting sexual predators,” Rickards wrote
on Twitter.
Pollack-Pelzner grew up in Portland,
graduated from Lincoln High School, obtained a bachelor of arts degree from
Yale University in 2001 and later his doctorate degree from Harvard in 2010.
He began teaching at Linfield in 2010,
became a tenured professor in 2016. He has served a two-year term as a faculty
trustee on the university’s board.
Earlier this month, he told The Oregonian/OregonLive
that he tried to work for change from within the university system but his
efforts were “blocked at every turn.”
“I am terrified of retaliation but I feel
like it’s my duty to my colleagues who entrusted their experiences to me,” he
said then.
The school’s faculty handbook says faculty
with tenure will be fired only for “adequate cause,” retirement by choice or
for medical disability, reduction in staff of a department due to finances or
discontinuation of a program or department.
If a teacher is fired for cause, the
university must present a statement of charges and the faculty member has the
right to be heard by an elected faculty hearing committee, according to the
handbook.
“Dismissal will not be used to restrain
faculty members in their exercise of academic freedom or other rights of
American citizens,” the handbook’s appendix says based on the American
Association of University Professors.
Nelson, the university spokesman, said due
process applies to terminations related to duties as a professor, such as
teaching effectiveness, but doesn’t apply in Pollack-Pelzner’s case.
“Today’s termination was for cause, not in
retaliation for issues raised. The university has repeatedly stressed the need
to report where required by law or by policy. Issues raised by the terminated
faculty member were independently investigated and no violations of university
policy were found,” Nelson wrote.
Linfield faculty and students have repeatedly in
the last two years called the administration and trustees to account for how
they have addressed sexual abuse and harassment complaints.
Former trustee David Jubb, who
has resigned from the board, was indicted on allegations of
abusing a student trustee after a faculty-trustee dinner in February 2019 and
abusing three other students in 2017. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In the same month as Jubb’s indictment, an
overwhelming majority of faculty members issued a vote of no confidence in the board chair, David Baca, finding he knowingly
failed to protect students.
Separately, another Linfield professor filed complaints last year alleging
that Davis and another board trustee, Norm Nixon, had touched her
inappropriately at school events. Another outside investigator substantiated
the claims but said they didn’t violate the university’s sexual harassment
policies. Davis denied the allegation but issued a public apology for causing
the professor discomfort.
Recently, the school stripped the faculty
trustee position of voting power on the board and barred the faculty trustee
from attending the board’s executive sessions. Instead, it added to the number
of faculty trustees who can sit on the board without voting power.
Last week, Reginald C. Richardson Sr., the
president of the Salem Keizer NAACP chapter, sent emails to Pollack-Pelzner,
the two psychology professors and other teachers who have spoken out against
the president, asking them to sit for an interview to have “a conversation
about the racial climate on campus.”
The teachers said they felt singled out for
challenging the Linfield president. Some asked for more information until they
would agree to meet.
Richardson did not respond to emails,
seeking comment.
Recent Linfield graduate Kiana L. M.
Anderson, in an email, said she was sickened by the university’s action.
Anderson graduated in May 2020 and is now a graduate student in English
literature at University of Arizona.
“To say that these allegations have harmed
the university is completely backward thinking— it is the institution, that is
harming the community. We are hurting. It is the institution that has failed so
miserably. This was the last straw for me,” she wrote. “I will continue to
stand in solidarity with Daniel and all of the other voices that have been
silenced along the way. At some point, the institution will have to recognize
that Linfield’s falling apart. ‘The centre cannot hold’ — to quote Yeats. It
may not be today or tomorrow, but the truth will prevail. There is an entire
community standing behind Daniel and what he represents. This will not go
without consequence.”
:::::::::::::::::
Linfield
fires professor who alleged antisemitism, draws condemnation
Advocacy organizations, alumni, students,
faculty members decry decision
By DORA
TOTOIAN of the McMinnville N-R/News-Register 4/30/2021
Linfield University fired Dr. Daniel
Pollack-Pelzner, a tenured English professor and faculty member of the Board of
Trustees who raised allegations of antisemitism and mishandling of sexual
misconduct claims.
A letter from the Foundation for Individual Rights
in Education raising concerns and a call from the Pacific Northwest ADL for
university President Miles K. Davis’ resignation followed, adding to
condemnation and similar calls from many students, professors and alumni.
Linfield University told the News-Register the
termination was for cause, claiming Pollack-Pelzner has “engaged in conduct
that is harmful to the university”; intentionally violated instructions to
preserve the attorney-client privilege with respect to information that was
entrusted to him in a position of trust and confidence; deliberately circulated
false statements about the university, its employees and its board; refused to
comply with university policies and, “in doing so, has been insubordinate and
interfered with the university’s administration of its responsibilities.”
Pollack-Pelzner said he is devastated and said
Linfield did not adhere to its own policies of guaranteeing due process in
firing tenured professors.
“It’s such a shock. It’s such a blow to all the
work my colleagues and I have been doing to try to make Linfield a safer and
more welcoming community, and I’m heartened that alumni and colleagues around
the world have not been cowed into silence by the abuse of Linfield
leadership,” Pollack-Pelzner said Thursday.
When pressed for details on some of the five
claims in a Wednesday afternoon interview, Davis declined to elaborate and said
he did not want to comment on a personnel matter.
“When institutions choose to take action, you
have to consider that if something was taken at this time, there had to have
been something going on that necessitated this decision,” Davis said.
The university fired Pollack-Pelzner Tuesday
during finals week, a few days before the end of the school year and a Board of
Trustees meeting.
Pollack-Pelzner said he sent a mass email on
Friday in response to a “fact sheet” a Linfield spokesperson sent. In the
email, he identified a fourth trustee accused of sexual misconduct.
Pollack-Pelzner raised concerns that the board did not investigate misconduct
allegations against that trustee or any current white male trustee on the
board. The university fired him four days later without due process, he
said.
Davis denied that the university had violated
Pollack-Pelzner’s right to due process as a tenured professor, insisting he was
fired for cause and not for reasons related to his teaching, research or
service to the institution. The faculty handbook states adequate cause must
directly relate to professors’ capacities as teachers or researchers.
“If you steal from an institution, you don’t get
to go through that process, or if you commit some other malfeasance, you don’t
get to go through that process,” Davis said. “That process was set up to
protect academic freedom, which this institution supports. It was not set up as
a process for when there’s malfeasance or termination for cause.”
However, the Foundation for Individual Rights in
Education (FIRE), a national group that defends rights such as freedom of
speech and due process for college students and professors, said the
professor’s process-free firing runs counter to Linfield’s own policies, and
said his speech critical of the university is protected by the university’s
commitment to expressive freedom.
FIRE is asking Davis to rescind Pollack-Pelzner’s
termination by next Friday.
“The egregious nature of terminating a faculty
critic without process cannot be overstated, nor can the chilling effect on
student and faculty expression that will follow Linfield’s reckless conduct,”
wrote Adam Steinbaugh, a lawyer at FIRE, in a Wednesday letter to Davis. “In
intentionally avoiding the scrutiny afforded by an unbiased faculty committee,
Linfield suggests that it is cognizant that its assertions about
Pollack-Pelzner would not withstand scrutiny.”
Steinbaugh wrote that the faculty handbook
outlines that dismissing a tenured professor goes through a lengthy process,
which includes informal settlement discussions, an informal inquiry by a
faculty committee, and a statement of charges from the administration. If
adequate cause can be established, it’s followed by a statement of charges and
the right to appear before a hearing committee.
“It proclaims that where its asserted rationale
for termination is unrelated to ‘responsibilities and duties as a professor’
and the termination is ‘for cause,’ it does not need to provide any process,”
Steinbaugh wrote. “That is precisely the opposite of the standard laid out by
Linfield’s policies and contrary to the conception of tenure, which provides
procedural protection for any alleged misconduct. No reasonable administrator
could credibly assert otherwise.”
Linfield Provost Susan Agre-Kippenhan initially
scheduled a meeting with Pollack-Pelzner for Tuesday afternoon, he said. He
requested to bring the English department chair as a witness and his wife for
emotional support, but was told he could have only one observer and that if he
wanted a lawyer present, he had to retain one by 1 p.m. Tuesday.
Pollack-Pelzner said he asked to postpone the
meeting, but soon received an email saying the meeting was canceled and that
he’d receive a package in the mail the next day, which contained his final
paycheck, a termination statement and information about Linfield benefits, he
said.
He learned of his firing when his screen froze
during a work Zoom call Tuesday afternoon, and he received an automatic
response saying, “Daniel Pollack-Pelzner is no longer an employee of Linfield
University” when he tried emailing his Linfield email address, he said.
“I want my students to know their voices matter
and that they can use their Linfield education to make a difference on issues
of concern in their community,” Pollack-Pelzner said. “The terrible message
that Linfield leaders are sending is that if you use your voice to prevent
abuse, you will be expelled from the community.”
Deric Wagner is a senior economics major in one
of Pollack-Pelzner’s classes this semester. He learned of his professor’s
firing when an email submitting a final 10-page essay bounced back. He is still
uncertain how he will receive a final grade for the course by Friday, he
said.
The English department and college are working
to accurately capture final grades for student, a university spokesperson said
Wagner outlined concerns he has about crises of
mental health and sexual assault in a Linfield alumni Facebook group and urged
accountability from the administration, though he emphasized he does not think
the board or administration members are terrible people, he said.
“I think that we don’t have a real community
anymore. It’s kind of created an us vs. them mentality and these rival groups,
and if we keep with that mode of thought, there’s no real end to this. We need
to realize these are different aspects of our community we need to bring
together,” Wagner told the News-Register Thursday.
Dr. Lisa Weidman, the chair of the department of
journalism and media studies, said she cannot understand why the university
fired Pollack-Pelzner. Weidman also used to be the chair of the faculty
planning and budget committee, a role in which she also served on other
committees and met with trustees three times yearly.
“His story has never changed and never wavered.
I’ve read it in many different places and contexts, and the details are always
the same,” Weidman said. “In addition, he has an impeccable reputation as a
person of integrity. He is also one of the most revered, most intelligent, most
accomplished faculty members at Linfield, and his students love him.”
Steinbaugh also took issue with Linfield saying
it fired Pollack-Pelzner for conduct harmful to the university, including
“false and defamatory statements.” Davis declined to say what those statements
were, and a Linfield spokesperson did not answer the same question Thursday.
“Linfield specifically promises its faculty
members that “[d]ismissal will not be used to restrain faculty members in their
exercise of academic freedom or other rights of American citizens,” Steinbaugh
wrote. “With respect to Linfield’s principal focus—that Pollack-Pelzner’s
speech is ‘false and defamatory’—we have serious doubts that Linfield can prove
that it falls within the narrow exception for defamation.”
Several people from the academic realm
questioned on Twitter and other social media why the university would fire
Pollack-Pelzner, with many of them predicting the university would lose any
lawsuit the professor may bring against the university.
Davis said, “We all know where this is headed”
and said the university is prepared for any “legal battle” that may come its
way.
When asked if he is filing a lawsuit,
Pollack-Pelzner said he is figuring out his options.
The Pacific Northwest chapter of the
Anti-Defamation League asked Davis in a Wednesday letter to consider
resigning.
“We remain deeply concerned by the lack of
transparency and accountability by “University” leadership over the alleged
pattern of antisemitic comments and the hurt that i[t] has caused to the Jewish
community,” ADL Pacific Northwest regional director MiriCypers wrote. “Now is
the time to begin the process of moving forward and healing on campus and in
the wider community.”
The letter adds to a call from the Oregon Board
of Rabbis for Davis and Board of Trustees Chair David Baca to resign, a demand
matched by many Linfield students, professors and alumni.
In a response letter, Davis said Linfield was
willing to have a conversation with the Pacific Northwest ADL but said he
believes the university has taken the necessary steps to engage in a healing
process.
“While we have strong disagreements with much of
the media (and social media) speculation, we do not believe further argument in
the press are an appropriate avenue for community healing,” Davis
wrote.
Pollack-Pelzner first brought allegations of
sexual misconduct to the board’s attention in 2019 and since then has
emphasized his concerns about the board’s handling of the allegations. In a
Twitter thread last month, Pollack-Pelzner described antisemitism he allegedly
experienced from President Miles Davis and Board Chair David Baca in the
process of sharing the allegations of sexual misconduct with the board. He has
repeatedly said he spoke up so Linfield community members feel safe reporting
sexual misconduct and other abuses of power.
Linfield has denied the allegations of
antisemitism against both Davis and Baca. An investigation last summer
substantiated two of Pollack-Pelzner’s nine claims against Davis, partially
substantiating that Davis “forcefully conveyed” that Pollack-Pelzner was
disloyal to Linfield by including the sexual misconduct allegations in a
trustee report, and substantiating an allegation that Pollack-Pelzner felt
Davis retaliated against him through a tweet. The investigation found that the
professor “endured significant resistance from President Davis and other
Linfield leadership.”
Two Linfield psychology professors recently told
the Oregonian that Davis allegedly referenced the Holocaust to make a point in
2018, saying something to the effect of, “You don’t send Jews to the showers
with soap.”
Previously, Davis said he does not recall making
the statement in 2018 but said that if he did, he would have attributed it to
one of his former business professors who used the imagery, in Davis’ words,
“to drive home the moral dimension of organizational work.”
Davis said Wednesday it’s difficult to know in
each instance how a person might react to comments and said people should let
each other know when something has offended them. When a reporter pointed out
that people had now clearly raised strong concerns about the alleged comment,
Davis seemed to double down on the idea that the onus is on people saying when
they are offended because “there’s always an opportunity for people to be
offended by things that are being said.”
Davis also independently brought up comments he
made about Jewish noses and had said as a guest speaker in Pollack-Pelzner’s
class, in a discussion of the “Merchant of Venice” and Jewish stereotypes,
there was no distinction between Jewish and Arab noses.
“I said, ‘Yes, that’s an old trope’ when talking
about Semitic people, particularly as someone who has lived in the Middle East,
spent time, and I said, ‘The differences don’t exist, because Semitic people
are Arabs and Armenians and the people who are there,’ so it isn’t appropriate,”
Davis said.
For more detailed coverage of the allegations,
visit newsregister.com
This weekend, the Board of Trustees will meet
and consider a vote of no-confidence in Davis and Baca that the College of Arts
and Sciences faculty assembly passed 59-11 last week. The executive committee
of the Board of Trustees said in a statement last week it reiterated its
“strong, ongoing support” of Davis and Baca, and in a Wednesday email to the
Linfield community that it supports the administration’s decision to fire Pollack-Pelzner.
Davis denied that the upcoming board meeting
played a role in Pollack-Pelzner’s firing.
Last weekend, the university administration also
suspended individual professors’ ability to email entire schools of faculty,
citing “many” professors’ complaints of “unsolicited messages.” Pollack-Pelzner
sent a mass email countering a “fact sheet” Linfield sent out about his
allegations, and he and five other professors who had criticized or brought
claims against Davis sent a mass email explaining they viewed their
investigation by the Salem-Keizer branch of the NAACP as an act of
retaliation.
Dr. Jennifer Linder, a psychology professor, was
one of the professors invited to speak to the NAACP. She and another psychology
professor, Tanya Tompkins, recently told The Oregonian about a Holocaust
comment Davis allegedly made in 2018 that Linder described as being in poor
taste. She was also horrified by the pause on mass emails, she said.
“It’s shocking to me that this could be
happening at an institution of higher education, where open expression and
freedom of speech should not only be valued, but they should be protected,”
Linder said Thursday. “Many people have spoken up about their concerns about
the climate at Linfield and Linfield’s inadequacy at dealng with sexual
assault, and issues of race, and it seems as if the more we try to get these
issues addressed, the more we’re silenced and intimidated.”
In response to several students writing messages
supportive of Pollack-Pelzner and/or critical of the administration in chalk on
campus, a Linfield staff member emailed student resident advisers saying they could
not use their positions or resources to advocate for their beliefs, reminding
them they are university employees and that failure to remove chalk would
result in a $25 per day fine.
Jeff Peterson, a sociology professor and founder
of the wine studies program, said he has seen consistent and troubling patterns
of the administration not taking care of key constituencies such as students
and professors. Peterson was also invited to speak to the NAACP.
“The question is not one of litigating this in
public; the question is one of accountability of leadership,” Peterson said.
“It’s appalling to see all of these people cooperating at this level of
gaslighting and intimidating.”
::::
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/
Linfield University Fires Professor Who Spoke Out
About Misconduct Cases
Allegations of
anti-Semitism, sexual misconduct and racial discrimination have led to turmoil
on the small Oregon campus. Some have called for the university’s president to
resign.
By Michael Levenson,
New York Times, May 1, 2021Updated 10:58 a.m. ET
Across the country, colleges and
universities have been wrestling with allegations of sexual misconduct, racial
discrimination and anti-Semitism. But rarely have the three collided at the
highest levels of leadership, as they have at Linfield University, a small,
historically Baptist college in Oregon’s wine country, which celebrated the
appointment of its first Black president in 2018.
The university faces growing calls for
the resignation of that president, Miles K. Davis, and the chairman of its
board of trustees amid accusations that they made offensive comments about Jews
and that Dr. Davis and three other board members had engaged in various forms
of misconduct with female professors and students.
One of those trustees resigned in 2019
and has been charged with sexual abuse. The controversies have played out for
months in a federal lawsuit filed by a student, through public statements from
faculty members and leaders, student protests, and votes of no confidence. It
has even pitted the N.A.A.C.P., which has cited racial bias in the accusations
against Dr. Davis, against the Anti-Defamation League, which has joined in
calls for Dr. Davis’s resignation.
Tensions
reached a high on Tuesday when the university fired Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, a
Shakespeare scholar and tenured professor of English who had served on the
board of trustees and had spoken out about the accusations of anti-Semitism and
sexual misconduct.
Students and alumni have condemned the
firing, and more than 1,000 professors from the United States, Canada and other
countries have signed a letter saying
the university’s action could “eviscerate the foundational principles of both
free speech and of faculty governance on university campuses.”
“They
have fired the whistle-blower,” said Jamie Friedman, an associate professor of
English, who had accused Dr. Davis and another trustee of touching her
inappropriately at university events. “It’s retaliatory in the extreme.”
In
interviews this week, Dr. Davis and the board chairman, David Baca, denied any
wrongdoing.
In a statement, the university said Dr.
Pollack-Pelzner had been fired “for cause.”
“He has engaged in conduct that is
harmful to the university; deliberately violated instructions to preserve the
attorney-client privilege,” and “deliberately circulated false statements about
the university, its employees and its board” and “refused to comply with
university policies,” the statement said. In doing so, it said, he was
“insubordinate and interfered with the university’s administration of its
responsibilities.”
Dr.
Pollack-Pelzner, who was hired by the university in 2010 and has written about
theater and the arts as a contributor for The New York Times, said he had
been fired without a hearing or any of the other due process protections
normally granted to tenured faculty members.
“It’s just devastating,” Dr.
Pollack-Pelzner said, adding that he had spoken publicly in his capacity as a
faculty trustee who had received complaints from students and colleagues.
“I promised my students and colleagues
that I would heed their concerns and make sure that people in positions of
power would not violate their power,” he said. He said that his firing sent the
message “that if you use your voice to speak up against sexual misconduct, then
you will lose your voice.”
The firing, previously reported
by The Oregonian, has
added to the extraordinary turmoil at Linfield, which was founded in 1858 as a
Baptist college and offers liberal arts, business and nursing programs. The
university, which has about 1,900 students and 139 faculty members,
maintains an affiliation with
the American Baptist Churches U.S.A.
Dr. Pollack-Pelzner lost his post a
month after he had outlined multiple accusations of anti-Semitism and sexual
misconduct by university leaders in a statement on Twitter.
He said that he had reported that four trustees had been accused of sexual
misconduct by students and faculty over the past year and suggested that there
be sexual harassment training and guidelines.
In response, he said, Mr. Baca, the
board chairman, “accused me — a Jewish trustee — of harboring a secret
agenda to grab power.”
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Baca
acknowledged mentioning a power grab in a long and contentious discussion but
said he had not known that Dr. Pollack-Pelzner was Jewish or that the comment
could be construed as anti-Semitic.
Dr.
Pollack-Pelzner also said that Dr. Davis had made a comment in 2018 about
“measuring the size of Jewish noses” when the professor had mentioned that he
was teaching “The Merchant of Venice,” which features Shylock, a character
often criticized as
an anti-Semitic stereotype.
Recently, two psychology professors,
Tanya Tompkins and Jennifer Linder, said that Dr. Davis had made a comment
about the Holocaust during a department meeting in 2018. Promising to be open
about budget cuts, he quoted a former professor of his who used to make the
analogy, “You don’t send the Jews to the shower with soap,” Dr. Linder said.
Dr. Tompkins remembered slightly different wording.
In an interview on Thursday, Dr. Davis
said that while he doesn’t recall the comments he made that day, he doesn’t use
the phrase anymore and added, “I’m sorry if I said something that offended them
at that time.”
Last month, the faculty of arts and
sciences took a vote of no confidence in Dr. Davis and Mr. Baca and urged them
to resign in a resolution that
condemned intolerance, discrimination and retaliation. The Oregon Board of
Rabbis called on Dr. Davis and Mr. Baca to resign. And the Anti-Defamation
League’s Pacific Northwest office urged Dr. Davis to consider stepping down.
Miri Cypers, the group’s regional
director, said that while the A.D.L. frequently responds to hate and
anti-Semitism on college campuses, “rarely is that anti-Semitism or hatred
perpetrated by a president of a university or other leadership.”
The most serious of the sexual
misconduct allegations involved a trustee, David Jubb, who resigned in June
2019 and was charged in an indictment last May with one count of felony sexual
abuse and seven counts of misdemeanor sexual abuse. The indictment came after a
student trustee filed a federal lawsuit in which she accused Mr. Jubb, 72, of
assaulting her after a faculty-trustee dinner. Mr. Jubb has pleaded not guilty
and his case is scheduled for trial in November, his lawyer said.
In another incident, Dr. Friedman
reported that Dr. Davis had come up from behind her after a panel discussion in
2018 and had rubbed his hands up and down her arms while whispering that he was
looking forward to meeting her later, she said.
Dr.
Friedman said she had also reported that another trustee, Norman Nixon, a
former member of the Los Angeles Lakers, touched her thigh during a university
dinner and asked if there was a “Mr. Friedman.”
A lawyer hired by the university
substantiated Dr. Friedman’s claim that Dr. Davis had put his hands on her arms
but found that the conduct had not violated Linfield’s anti-harassment and
sexual harassment policy. Dr. Davis said that an investigation had reached the
same conclusion about the accusations against Mr. Nixon, who could not be
reached. The university said he had “vigorously denied” the allegations.
Dr. Davis said those accusations and
others were being rehashed by professors unhappy with his restructuring of the
university after years of declining enrollment. He said racial bias might be a
factor in the accusations. Some professors may be uncomfortable with the
changes he has made as the university’s first Black president, he said.
“There’s a reaction to change,” he
said. “But then there’s also, maybe, a reaction to who is bringing the change.”
Dr. Davis said he was particularly
stung by the claims of anti-Semitism, calling it “the thing that bothers me the
most.” Last year, he denied making the remark about “Jewish noses,” and an
investigator hired by the university called it a “he said, he said” situation
that could not be substantiated. On Thursday, he recalled discussing the
physical characteristics of Jews and Arabs and making the point that “this
portrayal of Shylock with the hook nose is just ludicrous.”
“It becomes an echo chamber that I have
to spend my time defending, as opposed to looking at the scope of my life’s
work,” he said.
On Friday, the local branch of the
N.A.A.C.P. gave support to his account of racial bias, releasing a report that
praised Dr. Davis’s leadership and said he had been subjected to unfair
personal attacks because of his race.
It
said that he had been called “divisive, intimidating, combative, aggressive,
disrespectful and abusive,” which the report called coded racist language.
Linfield’s trustees “failed see that deeply held resistance to Black leadership
and culture fueled the ferocity of resistance to organization change,” the
report said. “This is what systemic and institutionalized racism looks like in
Oregon.”
The N.A.A.C.P. said Dr. Davis had
contacted it last month with concerns about racial bias. Dr. Pollack-Pelzner,
Dr. Linder, Dr. Tompkins, Dr. Friedman and two other professors who had
received requests to speak to the group responded in an email that
investigating employees who have reported harassment and retaliation, “no
matter how well-intentioned the investigation — is itself an act of retaliation.”
As the controversy has dragged on, Mr.
Baca, the board chairman, has tried to reassure students and others on campus
who have protested the handling of the sexual misconduct accusations, writing
in a letter to the
Linfield community last July, “I believe that you are safe, that there is
justice and that the trustees are protecting you.”
He also expressed some regret about his
handling of the accusations against Mr. Jubb. He said the university had
ordered Mr. Jubb to stop “fraternizing” with students after he was first
accused of misconduct in 2018. But that order was not strictly enforced, and
Mr. Jubb was accused of sexual misconduct again in 2019, at an event Mr. Baca
attended, he said.
“While I did not witness any untoward
behavior as alleged, I regret that Mr. Jubb was allowed to be in the same
setting with a student,” Mr. Baca wrote.
Mr. Baca’s open letter also took aim at
Dr. Pollack-Pelzner, saying “it is shameful that a faculty trustee has spread
misinformation” about the sexual misconduct cases.
Dr. Pollack-Pelzner said he had taken
the letter as a personal attack, adding that he had been ordered not to talk
about sexual misconduct outside of executive session and had then been banned
from attending the sessions and finally fired after speaking out on Twitter.
“It’s
overwhelming, it’s destabilizing — it’s an attack on the values of higher
education that I have worked so hard with colleagues to uphold,” he said. “I
don’t know how anybody could feel safe in this environment.”
….
Pioneer Hall on the Linfield University campus in McMinnville, Ore.
Miles K. Davis, president of
Linfield University
:::::
‘Everybody Is a Target Right Now’
A
president sacks his toughest faculty critic, and outrage goes national.
By Tom Bartlett and Jack Stripling, Chronicle of Higher
Education, APRIL 29, 2021
Daniel Pollack-Pelzner’s work-issued MacBook
froze in the middle of a Zoom call on Tuesday afternoon. At first
Pollack-Pelzner, who was working from home, thought it might be his internet
connection. Then the laptop restarted, and he saw a message saying he had been
locked out. He checked his work email on his phone and discovered he was locked
out of that, too. Concerned, he emailed his work account from a personal
account, and received the following auto-reply: “Daniel Pollack-Pelzner is no
longer an employee of Linfield University.”
And that’s how Pollack-Pelzner, a tenured professor of English,
found out that he had been fired from the university where he’d worked for more
than a decade.
Pollack-Pelzner’s unceremonious dismissal followed months of
conflict with the university’s leadership. That war of words became public in
March, when the professor posted a thread on Twitter in which he accused the
university’s president and its Board of Trustees of abusing their power. His
complaints centered on how allegations of sexual misconduct against several
members of the board had been handled. In addition, Pollack-Pelzner, who is
Jewish, said that he had been “religiously harassed” by the president.
It’s an ugly, complicated dispute, replete with charges and
countercharges about proper university procedure and what, exactly, was said
during closed-door meetings and in casual conversations. But there have already
been reverberations beyond Linfield, a 1,900-student college in McMinnville,
Ore., about an hour’s drive from Portland. So far the Anti-Defamation League
has urged the president to resign; a chapter of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People has started an investigation; and the
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has issued a statement saying it
is “seriously concerned” about the situation.
And there remain plenty of questions to be answered, chief among
them: What does it say about the state of tenure if a full professor can,
without any hearing or warning, be fired on a Tuesday afternoon?
The trouble started as soon as they met. Pollack-Pelzner was
introduced to Miles K. Davis, the university’s president, in 2018, not long
after he took over as Linfield’s leader. At that first meeting, the professor
told the president that he was discussing The Merchant of Venice in
one of his classes. Pollack-Pelzner is a Shakespeare scholar who has published
articles about the Bard in scholarly journals and more popular outlets,
including The New Yorker. He told Davis, he says, that teaching
that particular play, as a Jewish professor, was “important and complicated for
me.” (The character of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice is a
Jewish moneylender, and his name is sometimes used as an anti-Semitic slur.)
Then, according to Pollack-Pelzner, Davis brought up Jewish
noses and how they were similar in length, he believed, to Arab noses. The
professor found the remark out of place at the time, but he decided to let it
go. He cited it in the thread he wrote in March as part of what he sees as a
pattern of troubling remarks by the president, including — according to
Pollack-Pelzner — minimizing the significance of swastikas found on dorm
whiteboards in late 2019.
A campus investigation last August into the nose comment, along
with other matters, called it a “he said, he said situation” and stated that
Davis had denied saying it. But in an interview with The Chronicle,
Davis confirmed that he had indeed made the comment about Jewish and Arab
noses, which he said had been informed by the time he’d spent in the Middle
East. He also insisted that the remark was part of an academic discussion and
wasn’t meant to be offensive. Davis said he didn’t remember Pollack-Pelzner’s
mentioning he was Jewish. As for minimizing the significance of the swastikas,
Davis denied that allegation, and the campus investigation found that the
complaint “could not be substantiated.”
Another comment by Davis has also raised eyebrows. Two psychology
professors at Linfield, Jennifer R. Linder and Tanya Tompkins, said they
recalled Davis, during a meeting in 2018 about transparency and budget cuts,
making an off-color analogy about the Holocaust. “You don’t send Jews to the
shower with soap,” Linder recalled him saying. (Tompkins remembered a slightly
different phrasing.) No one reported the comment at the time, though the
professors talked about it among themselves afterward. “We were sort of so
shocked, and I remember a couple of us making eye contact,” Linder said. “We
are in a vulnerable position. We wanted to endear ourselves to the president.”
For his part, Davis told The Oregonian that he
didn’t remember making the comment, but that it was similar to an analogy by a
professor of his comparing people who were fired to Jews entering a gas
chamber. Davis said he would have attributed the comment to that professor if
he had made it.
Contacted by The Chronicle on Wednesday, three
people who had worked with Davis at Shenandoah University, where he was
previously dean of the business school, said the allegations of anti-Semitic
language sounded entirely out of character for the person they knew. “I could
see the possibility of a misunderstanding, but I also could see the possibility
that this is completely fake,” Clifford F. Thies, a professor of economics and
finance at Shenandoah, said in an interview. “Those seem to me the only two
possibilities.”
Bogdan Daraban, an associate dean and professor of economics at
Shenandoah, and Ralph T. Good, an emeritus professor, both said they had never
known Davis to display the kind of insensitivity of which he’s being accused.
Another source of friction between Pollack-Pelzner and the
president was how the university had dealt with allegations that members of the
Board of Trustees have engaged in sexual misconduct. The professor has accused
the board and Davis of suppressing those allegations and failing to thoroughly
investigate them. He’s also criticized what he sees as a lack of sufficient
sexual-harassment training for the university’s leaders.
The most serious allegations are against David Jubb, who left
the board in 2019. Jubb has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple
students. In one instance, according to The Oregonian, Jubb
allegedly reached under the skirt of an undergraduate who was serving as a
student representative on the board following a trustee dinner (the allegations
were detailed in a lawsuit filed by the student). Jubb has pleaded not guilty
to eight criminal charges, including one felony count of first-degree sexual
abuse.
Pollack-Pelzner said his months-long attempts to persuade the
university to take more action and to change policies fell mostly on deaf ears.
Along with training and more-stringent guidelines, he argued for “alternate
formats for social events where it’s not getting drunk at a country club late
at night.” Pollack-Pelzner said parts of a report he put together on sexual
harassment had been censored by the board.
So he went public, on Twitter, laying out a number of the
allegations in a 23-tweet thread that
concluded with his contention that the “president and board will continue to
abuse their power until someone with more authority stops them.”
Pollack-Pelzner posted that tweet on March 29. Almost exactly
one month later, he was fired by the university. First, he received an email
Tuesday morning from the provost, Susan Agre-Kippenhan, asking him to attend a
Zoom meeting that afternoon to “discuss your employment at Linfield.” The
professor said he had told the provost that he would like to have a lawyer
present at the meeting if it was going to be about his employment, and that he
would need time to retain one. As it turned out, though, there would be no
meeting. Instead, a few hours later, Pollack-Pelzner’s work laptop was
disabled, and a day later he received a FedEx delivery that contained a
termination letter.
Pollack-Pelzner had tenure and held an endowed professorship.
While he had publicly criticized the university, and aroused the ire of the
president, he was a faculty member in good standing, as far as he knew. He said
there had been no complaints about his scholarship or teaching. Could he be fired
just like that?
Not according to the university’s faculty handbook,
which lists a number of steps, drawn from recommendations by the American
Association of University Professors, that seem mandatory, including having a
faculty committee review all allegations against a professor under threat of
dismissal. The handbook also says that such charges must be presented in
writing at least 20 days before a hearing. None of that happened in this case.
When asked whether the faculty-handbook procedures had been
followed in Pollack-Pelzner’s firing, Davis said that the handbook had “not
been updated” and that there are a “number of things in that handbook that are
not valid.” The handbook says “Fall 2020" on its title page, and the most
recent update was in January of this year. The president said he was unaware of
the guidelines, hadn’t seen the most recent version of the faculty handbook, didn’t
know who had updated it, and didn’t believe it had been approved by the
administration.
“I’ve been kind of
dealing with the pandemic and keeping the institution open and going forward,”
Davis said. “Our legal representation feels very comfortable with the basis for
his termination.”
As for whether there should have been a period during which
Pollack-Pelzner would have had a chance to respond to the charges against him,
Davis replied with an analogy. “If a person walks up and punches a student in
the face, you’re telling me I need to go convene a group of people before I
take any action against them?” Davis said. The president added that
Pollack-Pelzner’s allegations against him had caused pain for “my entire family
and everybody in the institution who cares about truth.” Davis, who is Black,
also argued that it was “very likely” that the allegations had been prompted in
part by unconscious bias that white people, like Pollack-Pelzner, have toward
“people who look like me in positions of power.”
So what did Pollack-Pelzner do to merit his dismissal? The
president said that it had nothing to do with his fitness as a teacher or a
researcher (though that’s the standard, according to the faculty handbook).
Instead, he said, it was the result of Pollack-Pelzner’s having made a “number
of statements that were blatantly false.” The example he cited is the
professor’s stating, in a recent email to Linfield faculty members, that Jubb,
the former trustee, faced eight felony counts. In fact, there is one felony
charge against Jubb, along with seven counts of third-degree sexual abuse,
which is a misdemeanor in Oregon. So eight criminal charges total, not all of
them felonies.
Linfield’s position, officially, is that Pollack-Pelzner was
fired for “serious breaches” of his duty to the university. Agre-Kippenhan, the
provost, wrote in an email to the university on Tuesday that, “as a matter of
policy and privacy, personnel matters are confidential, but maintaining that is
not always possible — particularly when the precipitating events involve false
public accusations that have, sadly, harmed the university.” In an interview,
Agre-Kippenhan said that Pollack-Pelzner had been fired from the university
under his status as an employee, not as a tenured professor, and that the
faculty handbook needed to be revised because many of the provisions in it were
“not entirely useful.”
Some observers have come to see the drama unfolding at Linfield
in Shakespearean terms, as powerful forces appear to be working in concert to
protect a compromised leader. In this version, Pollack-Pelzner, the scholar of
Shakespeare, is the tragic hero, and Davis is the wicked king — and everywhere
are signs of his armies at war with his challengers. “Daniel’s firing is very
Shakespearean,” said Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, an English professor at Linfield.
“The drama that has unfolded — I was telling Daniel the other day, ‘How many
acts is this play?’”
Firing Pollack-Pelzner, said Dutt-Ballerstadt, sent a clear
signal to anyone who would challenge the administration: “Everybody is a target
right now.”
On Wednesday the chairman of Linfield’s English department
resigned that post, “effectively immediately.” In an email to the dean of arts
and sciences, David T. Sumner, the chairman, said he was stepping aside for
health reasons. “I have been fielding emails from Daniel’s students,” he wrote.
“But because I am no longer chair, I will now be forwarding those inquiries to
you.” Sumner did not respond to an interview request.
After several professors, including Dutt-Ballerstadt and
Pollack-Pelzner, publicly criticized the president, they were surprised to find
themselves singled out for interviews with investigators from an area chapter
of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The faculty
members first learned of the investigation in an April 20 email from Linfield’s
director of human resources. They were subsequently informed that an
administrative assistant from their college would help to schedule their
interviews with the Salem Keizer Branch of the NAACP, which was investigating
“allegations of racial animus at Linfield University.”
“It did not feel like an external investigation,” said Linder,
who, after going public with the Holocaust story, was asked to meet with the
investigators. Both subtly and overtly, critics at Linfield say, they’re
getting the message that dissent isn’t welcome at the university.
Last week the College of Arts and Sciences voted no confidence
in Davis and the board’s chairman, David C. Baca. On Saturday the college’s
dean, Joe Wilferth, sent an email to his colleagues, noting the “glaring
contrast” between the accomplishments he sees the university making and the
“other narratives that bombard our inboxes daily.” The dean wrote that he was
“perplexed” by the “vetting” of Linfield on social media and in news articles.
“In truth, I’ve never experienced anything quite like this,”
Wilferth wrote, “and I struggle to make sense of it all — viz. the gaslighting
while denouncing gaslighting, the calls for justice while denying due process,
the use of divisive rhetoric to denounce alleged divisive rhetoric, and so on.
I trust that this communication dynamic and the means by which we (or some of
us) choose to communicate is not somehow a part of the ‘Linfield way’ or the
new normal. I want no part of it, and I will actively work for a different and
better way forward.”
Dutt-Ballerstadt described the email as a “horrific” effort to
“silence us all.” Asked about this reaction, Wilferth said that his email “was
not intended to silence dissent.”
“It’s unfortunate that a colleague took it that way,” Wilferth
wrote in an email to The Chronicle. “To be fair, numerous
colleagues responded and expressed gratitude for my message and the leadership
it communicated.” In a follow-up email on Thursday, Wilferth wrote that any
mention of the no-confidence vote should note that 59 faculty members had voted
in favor of it, while “37 voted against or did not attend the meeting wherein
the vote took place.”
In another move that some professors have interpreted as an
effort to silence critics, Linfield on Sunday paused access to campus email
lists, citing the use of such lists to send “unsolicited messages.”
(Previously, someone had used such a list to share research, from a nonprofit
group called the Center for Institutional Courage, positing that perpetrators
often blame victims.)
With or without email lists, Linfield’s story attracted national
attention as scholars elsewhere saw one of their own so easily cast aside. By
Thursday afternoon in Oregon, a public letter in
protest of the firing had been signed by more than 600 professors, calling for
the AAUP to investigate. Denise Y. Ho, an assistant professor of history at
Yale University, said she had been stunned to see on her Facebook feed the news
about Pollack-Pelzner, with whom, as an undergraduate at Yale, Ho had taken a
senior seminar. It’s a story that “has ricocheted all around social media,” she
said. “Academics know what is happening.”
As for Pollack-Pelzner, he said he hadn’t
slept in the nights since his dismissal. He’s still not sure what will happen
with the students in his Shakespeare and British-literature courses, who were
supposed to turn in their final projects on the same day he was fired. When
news of his dismissal spread, some students condemned the decision by writing
messages in chalk on campus sidewalks. A memo followed to resident
advisers, The Oregonian reported, warning that at Linfield
University sidewalk chalk can be used only with authorization. The messages
were washed away by a staff
member with a hose.
