Michael Berube has posted a long and thoughtful piece on whether the Nona Gerard case may be compared to the case at the University of Southern Mississippi. Bottom line: they can't be fairly compared, because Penn State observed the principles of due process in revoking Gerard's tenure while USM president Shelby Thames simply and summarily fired two tenured professors because it suited him to do so. "I have to think that there really isn't any plausible linkage between a Penn State case that respected due process and came to a debatable conclusion, and a University of Southern Mississippi case that involved a peremptory lockout of two professors who were involved in an investigation of a senior member of the administration," Berube writes; "there's a world of difference between a questionable decision and a manifest outrage. The Penn State decision should be pursued, and the grounds for Gerard's dismissal made available for broader review. And the USM decision should be simply and unambiguously denounced."

That strikes me as a fair distinction, though I would qualify the claim that Gerard received due process. Gerard has noted that the structure of her hearing was changed at the last minute, without notice, and that as a result she was unable to present the full case for her defense.

Moreover, it's worth noting how exceptional it is for a university to fire a teacher mid-semester. Unless the teacher poses an actual danger or threat, he or she is typically allowed to complete the term (the idea is that this is what's least disruptive for students). The manner of Gerard's dismissal--she was fired midterm, and substitutes have now taken over her courses--is unusual enough that the AAUP has become involved. "We're very concerned about several issues regarding the dismissal and how it was conducted," Anita Levy, once a Victorianist at the University of Rochester and now an associate secretary with AAUP, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "We don't make a judgment on the substantive issues of the case," she noted, explaining that the AAUP's concern is strictly procedural: "Generally, if there's no such indication of urgency, it is unusual to have a faculty member removed in that manner. ... In this particular case, especially given the level of support Professor Gerard had (among students), there didn't seem to be any indication there was a reason to get her off-campus quickly."

It's important to distinguish among kinds of administrative and academic malfeasance. And, as Berube notes, it's important to recognize when you don't really know enough facts to make an informed judgement about what really happened. But it's also important not to argue real problems out of existence or to allow the lack of transparency surrounding cases like Gerard's to arrest the quest for clear, unambiguous answers about how the decision to fire her was finally reached. As Berube says, "the Penn State decision should be pursued, and the grounds for Gerard's dismissal made available for broader review." I agree completely, though I am troubled by the passive voice construction. Who should do this pursuing? And who is responsible for making public the apparently uspeakable grounds for Gerard's dismissal?

We can all agree that Penn State needs to stop hiding behind claims of confidentiality on this one; Gerard herself has gone to great lengths and great expense to get as much of her case made public as she can. But can we agree on whose job it is to "pursue" Penn State's decision, and how that person or body should ensure that the whole truth becomes available for "broader review"? It's not the AAUP's job to do that, as Levy carefully notes. It could be FIRE's job, if FIRE took up the case--but thus far FIRE has been silent about Nona Gerard, and, besides, it's not practical to expect a tiny, underfunded and overworked watchdog organization to shoulder the entire responsibility for forcing administrative accountability in higher education. It's not the media's job, though the media can help pressure the Penn State administration and has done so. Is it the job of the Penn State faculty? Of Pennsylvania taxpayers? Of Penn State's trustees? Berube's deceptively simple sentence contains worlds of complexity.

I'm going to open comments on this thread. Let the strategizing begin.

UPDATE: There's more interesting discussion at Crooked Timber.

UPDATE UPDATE: KC Johnson takes up my question at Cliopatria.

AND ANOTHER: Eric Rasmusen weighs in here.

Well, for starters "the Penn State decision should be pursued" by professor at Penn State through their elected representatives and their AAUP chapters. Professor like Michael Berube. We've heard about the Faculty Senate at USMississippi -- anything out of State College or Altoona? Dismissal in midsemester ought to lead to questions from the floor of the Faculty meetings, at least.

A pleasure to have the comments enabled again on your blog, hopefully the trolls will stay away.

Ordinarily I would say that primary oversight of the administration belongs with the faculty and that the state legislature and courts should avoid micro-managing universities. However, in this case the administration seems to have been acting as a proxy for the faculty, among whom Gerard had made herself unpopular. Even if her unpopularity is confined to a department or two, I don't expect that faculty in other divisions would cross their colleagues to support her. I'm assuming that the PSU faculty are not unionized, but this is one of the few instances where a faculty union would be useful. It might be optimistic to expect the trustees to take up a relatively small case, but they would probably be the ideal people to do it.

An altogether fair response, Professor O'Connor, and I won't try to claim in return that all my deceptively simple sentences contain worlds of complexity. You're right that mid-semester firings are strange, the kind of thing I would reserve for flamethrowers in possession of actual flames. So, to address that troublesome passive voice in my posting: I think this is a job for the AAUP, and I'm glad to see they're involved. I'm a member, and have been since 1994, but there's no chapter at Penn State- University Park (and no, we're not unionized, either). But I can get in touch with people at the national.

In the meantime, I see that the Penn State administration has already been accused, in some quarters, of "slandering" Gerard-- even in its tight-lipped announcements thus far. Again, about this (as about all substantive questions in this case) I am still officially agnostic. But for now, I can see why the administration would refuse to say more about the grounds for Gerard's dismissal-- frustrating though this is for any number of Penn State students and faculty-- before this case goes to court.

More than 2,000 full time faculty at Assistant, Associate, or Full rank on the University Park campus (figure here from Penn State's fact book) and no AAUP chapter?

Lordy.

So what about a representative body of the faculty? Do you have one of those? If I were an assistant professor at Penn State I would be begging some tenured member of my department to at least ASK a question on the floor.

The Faculty Senate at Penn State may have become a forum in which the administration makes announcements. Except for the Policy Committee, which is in charge of the Faculty Manual, the Clemson Faculty Senate operates pretty much that way. The last FS President at Clemson who could be counted on to stand up to the administration finished his term in 1997.

But on the chance that the FS hasn't turned completely spineless, the Gerard matter should be pursued there.

Beyond that, media involvement is really important. A lot depends on the orientation of the local newspaper. Some dailies are in the pocket of the university administration, or the Board of Trustees. The reason Shelby Thames hasn't won in a walkover at University of Southern Mississippi is the willingness of the Hattiesburg American to question his management record. In a comparable standoff, the Greenville News would print administration press releases.