Posted on 02/10/2016 7:09:49 AM PST by detective
Professors from universities across the country - from Stanford to North Carolina Central to the University of Nebraska to Harvard - signed a petition Tuesday calling on the Mount St. Mary's University administration to reinstate professors who had been fired.
Within hours of being posted, the petition had more than 2,400 digital signatures, a symbol of the outrage from some in the campus community as well as in broader academic circles who viewed the terminations as retribution against faculty who had opposed the president. They also said the decisions threaten the academic freedom at the private Catholic university in Maryland and violate the school's core principles.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
what is going on?
Left wing fascists ideologues whining that their fellow travelers where held accountable for their actions?
now remember, that other “professors” at “other schools” are protesting people getting at St Mary’s does NOT indicate that what happened at St Mary’s was incorrect or illegal, nor even “wrong” ...
The teaser doesn’t go into details, but most of the time, when “professors” protest elsewhere in today’s academia hysteria, it is usually a good sign of rational thought at the place that the others are complaining about.
Read the article. It’s interesting.
I know ... it’s the comPost. Still ...
Looks like the new President wanted to identify early in their freshman year those students who were highly unlikely to succeed, and urge them to drop out sooner rather than later. Some faculty objected and were sacked.
Based on the article, I’m inclined to side with the new President ... but it’s not really my problem.
“The teaser doesn’t go into details, “
But the article does ...
True.
“Based on the article, I’m inclined to side with the new President ... but it’s not really my problem.”
I tend to but two things:
1. His language, if reported correctly, is a little OTT for a college president.
2. How much of this was to weed out students before they got into the federal database.
It appears that they were being held accountable not just for their “opinions” but as well as their apparent “instructional desire for expression” in the classroom.
Meh...when a math prof goes-off on the current president, s/he ought not do so in the teaching venue. The CHEM-Eng students don’t care...
No way, he goes to a Catholic college and wants to lessen the impact of religion and make it all about profits.
From my own experiences, “academics” are among the most political, ideological, bureaucratic, petty and self-involved people there are. Henry Kissinger once said that is because there is so little at stake.
It seems the college President wants to get a little tougher and raise the university to higher standards by weeding out slackers early. Nothing wrong with that. The “special snowflake” culture in education needs to be eliminated.
I’m no longer worried about OTT language. In today’s America, a presidential candidate can call another presidential candidate a “pussy” and be applauded.
There apparently is some issue with a Fedzilla database. I’m not terribly concerned there either. The proper place to weed out the non-hackers is the admissions office. That said I have no issue with him attempting to identify the non-hackers who got through admissions, and encourage them to leave with a full refund. It would seem to be both just and merciful.
The new president seems to think MSM is an MBA class case study. Alas he is about to find out he is wrong:
1. He better have an air tight good reason to fire a tenured professor otherwise he will have shot a hole in his budget.
2. Even if he has an air tight cause, the lack of due process is likely to harm the president’s cause.
3. The president sadly is reacting to the way the federal government collects data rather than any academic or educational problem.
I suspect the president will be gone soon.
That’s a nice, quick indictment of “tenure”.
Whether it is an indictment of tenure or not tenure is a contractual obligation. Violating contracts will cost money, money a private school may not have.
“academic freedom” does not mean what the Frankfurt School Left thinks it means.
Very troubling that the President is reportedly "contemptuous" of Mt. St. Mary's Catholic identity and emphasis. I don't know any of the *names* mentioned here, or any *issues* beyond what the article sketches out, but it does sound like MSM's President is more into the bottom line (money) and not the actual mission, the very raison d'etre of Mt. St. Mary's, which is Catholic intellectual, social and spiritual formation.
And "the Mount" has long had a respected (by me) reputation of being Catholic with a capital C--- one of the few.
Mount St. Mary’s is one of the better seminaries in the country. The attrition rate for those considering the priesthood is higher than it is for most other types of programs.
I was fearful when the article started in about retribution against those who disagreed with the president, and I was thinking of Obama, not the college presdient.
I do get concerned when the controlling factor is some federal reporting requirement.
i went to the Mount for a year on a track scholarship...it was in the middle of nowhere so i transferred...
I did read the article. It was very light on details. There seems to be more to the story.
Mt. St. Mary’s University is frequently confused with St. Mary College in St. Mary, Maryland. The former is inland, up by the Pennsylvania boarder, and is a Catholic school. The other is a public college.
Mt. St. Mary’s has been struggling to get their enrollment up and to reduce its washout rate. The school was in the news a year or so ago when they brought in a Cambridge corporate type to be their president. Looks like he started using some corporate techniques on his underlings. He underestimated the push back he would get from the academy.
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