Thursday, April 29, 2021

Newspaper stories about Linfield from April and May 2021

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.

https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2021/04/alumni-parents-national-group-slam-linfields-firing-of-professor-who-raised-sex-abuse-anti-semitic-allegations.html




Chalked messages on Linfield University campus

"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.”

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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.

https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2021/04/linfield-university-fires-professor-who-spoke-out-against-sexual-misconduct-raised-allegations-against-president.html

 

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.”

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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.”


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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/01/us/Linfield-university-professor-fired.html?

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.Credit...Will Matsuda for The New York Times

 



Miles K. Davis, president of Linfield UniversityCredit...Will Matsuda for The New York Times

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‘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.