You may be wondering whatever happened with Nona Gerard, the Penn State Altoona theater professor who may lose her job because she criticized colleagues too vociferously and staged a campus play that a major donor found offensive (I wrote about Gerard's case here, here, here, and here). Two days of hearings were held last last month to determine whether the charges against Gerard were reasonable and to arrive at a recommendation regarding her future employment at Penn State. Now the results are in, and they are not favorable.

I publish below Gerard's statement about the hearings and the decision.

The report from the Standing Joint Committee on Tenure has recently been made available to me.

Unanimously they concluded, "The University failed to prove that Professor Gerard failed to perform the functions required by her appointment." I am gratified they rejected the failure to perform charge; this was a preposterous charge from the onset.

Unanimously the committee also concluded "the University did prove that Professor Gerard committed grave misconduct." I conclude that the real problem is that the committee did not hold the University to its burden of proof. I believe the committee couldn't have possibly found that they did provide this proof. Indeed, we were able to rebut most of this charge quite confidently. As a matter of fact, 3 witnesses testified that my "hostile e-mail's" were no different than the climate of e-mail's on their own Division List Serves. In addition, we were able to prove absolutely that nepotism, favoritism, old boy network, people in power with a lengthy complaint record (and in one case Sexual Harassment records), poor management, abusively tempered staff, extremely poor hiring practices, half truths and fabricated qualifications were indeed some of the many errors on the side of the Altoona Administration. The committee severely limited our time to present our evidence and during the final two days of hearing cut both sides down to 5 hours of presentation from 9. As a result, my lawyer and I scrambled to decide what proofs to let go of in the sake of time. In all, we had 25 witnesses to present (in comparison to their 7) as well as to cross-examine their witnesses and to enable me to have time on the stand. This was a great disservice to the presentation of truths and documentation. This hearing was to be my due process and it was severely compromised on numerous regards. As this was an internal hearing, I was never counting on fair play, but I expected more than this from a University I have given my excellent service to for 15 years.

The committee concluded by a majority vote 3-2: (The committee was made up of 2 Administrative Deans and 3 faculty) "It is the recommendation of the Standing Joint Committee on Tenure, that Professor Gerard be terminated for adequate cause based on grave misconduct."

This was a very close decision and should give President Spanier pause. That one charge was unanimously dropped and that it was the basis for the other charge should be a huge consideration for him.

It is also disturbing that the committee has fully ignored the complaint against me by a large money donor to the campus and the compelling circumstances and "coincidental" timing of the complaint and Dean Cale's attempt to revoke my tenure.

I am very disappointed in the decision of the Joint Committee. I do not think that Penn State University in any way proved its case that my tenure, for which I worked so long and hard deserves to be revoked. Moreover, I am concerned that the process before the Joint Committee was not full and fair, and that it was compromised by a lack of even-handedness. I think that this is a regrettable decision and that it does not well serve the cause of academic freedom or Penn State University. I intend to fight it in the Courts where I am confident where I will receive justice and that my position will be restored.

I remain concerned by the attack mounted by the administration at Penn State Altoona. It has been extremely disruptive to my life and career and has forced me to expend great amounts of my personal resources. In addition, I had to devote huge amounts of time to this matter that could have better have spent on serving the students at Penn State. Nevertheless, I hope that by making this stand that I will in some way prevent the University from unfairly attacking the academic freedom of other faculty in the future.

President Spanier received the report/recommendation from the committee on Thurs. Feb. 19. He now has 30 days with which to make his final decision. I can only hope that he cares enough about Academic Freedom and fairness to adjust this. Perhaps he will also take the time to read the over 150 letters of support that have been sent in favor of me. After all, it is an extremely small number of people at our campus that wish to see me terminated. The larger population is outraged and as a result of this attack, frightened. Not the ideal way to run an institution of freethinking and Higher Ed.

I thank you all for your continued support.

Most sincerely,

Nona Gerard