I'm interrupting Pictures of an Institution's MLA programming to bring you one of the more horrifying stories of academic injustice that I've heard in some time.

The setting is Cumberland College, a small Baptist institution in Kentucky. The occasion is a website posted on October 6, 2003, by Robert Day, then an assistant professor of Social Work at the college. The issue is the site's content: when Cumberland College administrators learned about the site on October 13, 2003, the president called Day in and gave him the choice of resigning or being fired. Day chose resignation and reports that the entire discussion took less than two minutes. Immediately thereafter, Day's computer was confiscated and all the files on it were copied--the college claims they are its property. The locks on Day's office were changed, and the college sent the city police to his house to serve him with a private memo from the president warning him that he would be arrested if he came back to campus.

What did Day do to deserve such treatment? Visit wecareforcumberland.com and see for yourself. The website does nothing more heinous or drastic than propose a series of entirely reasonable and unexceptionable reforms at Cumberland College. Day had the audacity to call for financial and administrative accountability at his college--to suggest that there ought to be a faculty senate, for example, and fair contracts, and a collective review of the school's mission statement. He called for financial disclosure of income and expenditures, a review of the pay scale, and clearly defined departmental budgets. Hardly a revolutionary set of objectives--but ones that clearly threatened the daylights out of the college administration. Cumberland College's abrupt and hostile dismissal of a faculty member for behaving in the exemplary manner of the engaged, concerned campus citizen suggests that Day was not only absolutely right to call for administrative reform at his school, but, ironically, that he was nowhere near harsh enough in his indictment.

Wecareforcumberland.com has grown a good deal since the good old days of its first, innocent week on line. There is much material there to ponder, including the college president's dismissive take on Day and his site. Don't miss the timeline documenting a series of disturbing administrative actions as well as the details of Day's case. In December, the AAUP sent a letter to the college president defending Day's academic freedom. Day is suing Cumberland College for constructive dismissal, tort of outrage, and defamation.

I'll post more as more becomes available.

UPDATE: From Belief Seeking Understanding:

there is a section in the website where there are almost 60 comments made by students, former faculty, parents and alumni. Many of these express shock and dismay at the firing of Day, but many of them express grave concerns about the attitude and behavior of Dr. James Taylor, who has been president of Cumberland since 1980. The 5-count indictment seems to be 1) spending money on externals (clock towers, roundabouts, gazebos) at the expense of students (no air conditioning in Archer Hall, one of the student dormitories, no College security service; 2) using university money to subsidize the lifestyle of Dr. Taylor and his wife ($79K expense account in 2001-2002); 3) no accountability regarding revenue and expenses (cancelling faculty family benefits in August of 2003); 4) a willingness to fire faculty members, or make life so miserable for them that they will leave ... and 5) a snide, condescending attitude toward students (dissing faculty members to students, exploiting student employees).