Thread by @glukianoff

Today on ERI: @AdGo calls out @UCF for its attempt to fire tenured prof @CharlesNegy in a way that "will undermine the concept of academic freedom." (1/22)

thefire.org/ucf-is-killing…

In Dec. 2019, students complained about Negy’s tweets, calling them racist & harmful; @UCF said they were #freespeech. In June 2020, students complained again. This time, @UCF solicited more complaints & opened an investigation. (2/22)

ucf.edu/news/addressin…

The day after that, @UCF held a video chat where students asked about Negy. Admin said, “the wheels are in motion… believe that by the time you get on the campus as a freshman, it will have been dealt with.” (The “it” was Prof Negy.) (3/22)

The investigation would last seven months, involve interviews with over 300 people, & cover allegations spanning 15 years of teaching. The result was a 244-page report & @UCF’s decision to move forward with the process to fire Negy on Jan. 13. (4/22)

orlandosentinel.com/news/education…

The investigation didn’t respect some basic due process principles. Negy wasn’t given notice of most of the allegations; he was given "examples" of what might be discussed. Lack of notice can make it impossible to bring exculpatory evidence. (5/22)

quillette.com/2020/08/13/the…

Investigators would interrogate Negy for a total of nine hours. When he couldn’t recall incidents from as far as 15 years prior, they branded him "inconsistent" & treated his testimony as unreliable. (6/22)

Investigators also considered his protestations of innocence unreliable because "Respondent has motivation to lie (i.e. protect his status as a faculty member & his reputation)" (see page 82). (7/22)

knightnews.com/wp-content/upl…

Except, if the accusations are false, then Negy is motivated to tell the TRUTH to protect his status & reputation. To assume he has a motive to lie to protect his reputation is to presume he’s guilty. Due process requires a presumption of innocence. (8/22)

There are two non-speech allegations in the report. First is failing to properly report a student's sexual assault claim against a TA in 2014; Negy denies that the conversation included any mention of an assault, but they’ve deemed him "unreliable" b/c of the interviews. (9/22)

The other is his alleged $17 “bribe” to a Peru health clinic in 2011. When he got a one-shot vaccine, the clinic wrote it as two shots, b/c an airline employee had (falsely) told him he needed two shots. (10/22)

As @AdGo points out, "If either one was a sufficient basis for termination, the report would’ve been three pages long." But it isn’t, & instead, it has non-faculty administrators making judgments about where academic freedom begins & ends. (11/22)

Those judgments threaten to undermine academic freedom. They’re on pages 178 to 181 of the report, but you need to flip back to the underlying allegations to really see how poorly they line up. (12/22)

Ex: At @UCF, there's freedom to say Jesus was schizophrenic (p. 36), but not that he didn't die for our sins (p. 36). Academic freedom covers saying Islam is cruel & not a religion of peace (p. 107) but not that it is a “toxic mythology” (p. 35). (13/22)

knightnews.com/wp-content/upl…

Saying girl scouts preserve their virginity was covered by academic freedom (p. 25); saying women are attracted to men with money was not (p. 26). Whether any of these statements are correct or wise isn’t the point. (14/22)

The point is that, if academic freedom is unpredictable, it ceases to serve its purpose, which is to protect inquiry into uncomfortable topics. (15/22)

d28htnjz2elwuj.cloudfront.net/wp-content/upl…

Zero tweet: keep climbing down for more on the sorry state of tenure, OR slide down this link to my @katejulian interview & the latest updated to my book w/ @jonhaidt COTAM. (or keep sliding down to my wacky twitter labyrinth) (0/22)

https://twitter.com/glukianoff/status/1349830010283163648

Negy has tenure. Traditionally, tenure protects profs' speech. Ex.: when Marquette tried to fire John McAdams in 2014 over a blog post; a 2018 court ruling found that violated his rights as a tenured professor. (16/22)

thefire.org/wisconsin-supr…

Recently, though, schools have tried to undermine tenure. In 2017, Drexel promised George Ciccariello-Maher they wouldn’t fire him for his speech; instead, they banned him from campus & kept him under investigation until he resigned. (17/22)

thefire.org/drexel-profess…

And ERI readers already know about Mike S. Adams, who committed suicide this summer after UNC-Wilmington pushed him into early retirement to appease an outrage mob. (18/22)

thefire.org/professor-mike…

Meanwhile, tenure itself is becoming less common. Among full-time faculty at tenure-granting institutions, the percentage of faculty with tenure declined from 54% in the 1999-2000 school year to 45% in 2018-2019. (19/22)

nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/i…

It could be a coincidence that tenure is declining as cancel culture is on the rise. It might also be censorship envy in action, with higher ed admins wanting to cull problem faculty the way private employers did all summer. (20/22)

thefire.org/the-nypost-twi…

Whatever the cause, the outcome is the same. Negy was denied due process or a presumption of innocence, & UCF has created a definition of academic freedom so unpredictable that no professor could ever rely on it again. (21/22)

On day two of the investigation, an admin said on a web chat that Negy would be “dealt with.” That was the real outcome of the investigation. The seven months that followed were administrative theater. (22/22)

For more on "censorship envy," click this thread and get the "Streisand effect" and "the slippery slope tendency" absolutely free! (23/22)

https://twitter.com/glukianoff/status/1316882796137320449