Academic Freedom and Tenure Investigative Reports

This report, prepared by the Association’s staff, concerns the case of Dr. Jane Harty, a part-time faculty member with forty years of service in the Department of Music at Pacific Lutheran University. In November 2018, Dr. Harty was suspended from her teaching responsibilities for the remainder of her one-year contract and informed that she would not be reappointed for the following academic year. The stated reason for the action was that she had violated a directive issued by her department chair that prohibited faculty members from accepting payment from PLU students for private lessons given independently of the university. The summary nature of the action, the relatively minor character of the infraction, and the fact that Dr. Harty’s longtime advocacy for the rights of faculty members on contingent appointments had brought her into repeated conflict with her administrative superiors suggested that the administration had imposed the suspension for reasons that implicated principles of academic freedom.

The report of the investigating committee concerns the dismissal of a tenured professor and endowed chair at Linfield University in Oregon. The report finds that Linfield’s administration violated the 1940 Statement and the institution’s own regulations when it dismissed the professor, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, without demonstrating adequate cause for its action before an elected faculty hearing body. The investigating committee also found that the administration violated Pollack-Pelzner’s academic freedom to participate in institutional governance without retaliation. General conditions for academic freedom and shared governance at Linfield University, the report states, are “deplorable.”

This report concerns actions taken by the administration of Collin College to terminate the services of Professors Lora Burnett, Suzanne Jones, and Michael Phillips. The investigating committee found that the administration’s actions involved “egregious violations” of all three faculty members’ academic freedom to speak as citizens and to criticize institutional policies, and, in the case of Phillips, of academic freedom in teaching. The committee determined that the administration dismissed Jones and Phillips from their appointments without a pretermination hearing before an elected faculty body in which the burden of demonstrating adequate cause for dismissal rests with the administration. The committee also found that the administration failed to afford Burnett the opportunity to petition an elected faculty committee to review her allegation that the nonrenewal decision violated her academic freedom. The report concludes that the conditions for shared governance and academic freedom at Collin College are “grossly inadequate.”