A student walks out of the Riley Center on the campus of Linfield University in McMinnville, Ore., Tuesday, May 21, 2019. Miri Cypers, the groups regional director, said that while the A.D.L. (Courtesy of Linfield University). In another account, a faculty member accused Linfield President Davis of misconduct. Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, a tenured. But, for Davis, the minutiae of process are important for others: So what did Pollack-Pelzner do to merit his dismissal? About a month after his widely shared Twitter thread, Pollack-Pelzner was let go so abruptly that he learned of it only when he was locked out of Linfields email system. Pollack-Pelzner said he believed the antisemitism was partly in response to his asking the school to do more to address allegations of sexual assault. If Davis believes that Linfield can prove that Pollack-Pelzner violated university policy, he should submit that question to an unbiased faculty committee, as due process requires. The university exists as a powerful reminder that threats to academic freedom often come not from ideologues but from administrators who fear criticism and have no business running a university. It has even pitted the N.A.A.C.P., which has cited racial bias in the accusations against Dr. Davis, against the Anti-Defamation League, which has joined in calls for Dr. Daviss resignation. FIREs award-winning Newsdesk covers the free speech news you need to stay informed. 21,741 followers. The Save Our Linfield nonprofit has raised more than $10,000 for a legal defense fund for . Why didnt his obituaries say so? But in an interview with The Chronicle, Davis confirmed that he had indeed made the comment about Jewish and Arab noses, which he said had been informed by the time hed spent in the Middle East. frequently responds to hate and anti-Semitism on college campuses, rarely is that anti-Semitism or hatred perpetrated by a president of a university or other leadership.. Linfield fires prof who raised sexual harassment, antisemitism allegations By Rob Manning (OPB) April 27, 2021 6:58 p.m. 2023 Advance Local Media LLC. Recently, two psychology professors, Tanya Tompkins and Jennifer Linder, said that Dr. Davis had made a comment about the Holocaust during a department meeting in 2018. [11] Pollack-Pelzner, an English literature professor who had tenure, was fired Tuesday after he and others publicly accused Linfield President Miles K. Davis of making multiple antisemitic comments, including about Jewish noses as well as the Holocaust. Faces of Research: Meet Aaron Stebner - February 13, 2023. The FIRE Legal Network is a nationwide group of attorneys to whom we refer cases when counsel is necessary and the matter at issue falls outside the scope of FIREs mission or ability to assist. Richard Belzer was a Jewish comedian. The boards vice-chair, Kerry Carmody, will become interim chair on Oct. 1. Its hard to see the universitys interest in protecting the reputation of a former trustee, much less one who resigned (for health reasons, the university said) after allegedly sexually assaulting a student. The most serious of the sexual misconduct allegations involved a trustee, David Jubb, who resigned in June 2019 and was charged in an indictment last May with one count of felony sexual abuse and seven counts of misdemeanor sexual abuse. Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan are reviving it. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 510 Walnut St. | Suite 1250 If Baca isnt going to step down, he should at least apologize for the tone of his statement, Miller wrote Friday in an email to Linfield faculty. Learn with FIRE provides learners with the opportunity to take courses on a wide range of topics, including free speech and due process, designed by our expert staff. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 1,283 (fall 2021), its setting is rural, and the campus size is 189 acres. Several professors have of late used mass emails or publicly criticized the university for what they describe as Linfield's poor handling of several sexual misconduct complaints involving members of the Board of Trustees. That includes the dismissal of Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, which occurred in the middle of a Zoom meeting at Linfield University without him being granted any hearing or due process. 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Higher Ed Leaders Propose Gun Violence Solutions, NYC Comptroller Urges Yeshiva U to Recognize LGBTQ Group, Ore. Lawmaker Seeks Sexual Misconduct Survey for All Colleges, New Report on the Resilience of Puerto Rican Universities. Davis invited the NAACP to investigate whether he was subject to racist treatment after he was accused both of antisemitism as well as sexual assault. Linfield University announced Tuesday that the chair of its Board of Trustees, David Baca, has stepped down from the leadership post after four years, including a tumultuous last several months. Colleen Flaherty April 19, 2021 (Daniel Pollack-Pelzner/Twitter) How to request transcripts Contact us For more information on how to get involved with Linfield, please don't hesitate to reach out. On Thursday, he recalled discussing the physical characteristics of Jews and Arabs and making the point that this portrayal of Shylock with the hook nose is just ludicrous.. I havent seen any indication that people in positions of power at Linfield want to hold themselves accountable., Other organizations have also come out in Pollack-Pelzners defense. The handbook needs to be revised or it was never approved? Her gift included real estate in Spokane, Washington, valued at $250,000 (a sum worth nearly $4 million in 2020). So eight criminal charges total, not all of them felonies. Lost your password? You are now subscribed to FIRE Updates. As FIRE detailed yesterday, Linfield University's senior leadership abruptly terminated Daniel Pollack-Pelzner after he criticized the university's handling of sexual assault and harassment allegations against board members, and alleged that Linfield president Miles K. Davis had made a remark about "Jewish noses." The vote came after reports in The Oregonian/OregonLive about the 2019. of Jubb, who faces sexual abuse charges involving a student-trustee in 2019 and three students in 2017. Davis told the Chronicle of Higher Education that the schools faculty handbook had not been updated and said a number of things in that handbook that are not valid. He added that Our legal representation feels very comfortable with the basis for his termination.. While we have strong disagreements with much of the media (and social media) speculation, we do not believe further argument in the press are an appropriate avenue for community healing.. Regarding the Listservs, Linfields vice president for finance and administration wrote to faculty and staff members over the weekend to say that based on the request of many faculty we are pausing access to global and college/school emails lists due to the use of these lists to send unsolicited messages. Even mass emails about the general education revision are paused, and Linfield requests that all broad correspondence be vetted and distributed by the vice presidents office. Pollack-Pelzner tweeted that after he passed on misconduct reports, he faced comments related to his religion from the head of the human resources department and the board chair, and he had also heard President Davis talk about measuring the size of Jewish noses. In addition, Pollack-Pelzner said that Davis told him people were overreacting to swastikas that had appeared on campus. And the Anti-Defamation Leagues Pacific Northwest office urged Dr. Davis to consider stepping down. And because of the incompetent despotism of some of its leaders, Linfield is now a national story. Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. In a related case, Linfield faces a whistle-blower lawsuit from a former professor, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, who says he was fired for standing up to the board about sexual misconduct and discrimination. Jewish and Arab noses, he explained, are actually around the same size. Now people. At issue is Pollack-Pelzners unwelcome insistence that this same board take more seriously the documented mishandling of a case of trustee sexual misconduct, as well as additional similar allegations. The firing of a tenured professor at Linfield University in Oregon without a hearing has sparked a controversy involving allegations of anti-Semitism, racism, and claims that sexual. No competent university leader could credibly believe that tenured faculty are at-will employees. His termination, the letter says, threatens to set a precedent that will eviscerate the foundational principles of both free speech and of faculty governance on university campuses., Miles K. Davis, Linfield University's president, denies saying anything antisemitic. The reports only reference to the allegations of antisemitism comes in a rebuttal to the Jewish organizations that demanded Davis resignation. (JTA) In the latest developments in an ongoing controversy at Linfield University over the firing of a tenured Jewish professor who accused the school of anti-Semitism, a report from the. Promising to be open about budget cuts, he quoted a former professor of his who used to make the analogy, You dont send the Jews to the shower with soap, Dr. Linder said. Allegations of anti-Semitism, sexual misconduct and racial discrimination have led to turmoil on the small Oregon campus. Do these folks really think theyre going to win a social media war against Generation Z?, Trey PetersonWood, a recent Linfield graduate, said Monday that the more Linfield attempts to censor and silence advocates for accountability, the more damage they are causing to this great institution that has the potential to be a leader in the age of what oppressors call cancel culture, but in reality, its the age of accountability.. That failure led to sexual abuse allegations against trustee David Jubb stemming from a 2019 encounter between Jubb and a student-trustee at a bar after a faculty-trustee dinner. But rarely have the three collided at the highest levels of leadership, as they have at Linfield University, a small, historically Baptist college in Oregons wine country, which celebrated the appointment of its first Black president in 2018. Israeli Orthodox Jew raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for victims of settler riot, Wikipedias Supreme Court tackles alleged conspiracy to distort articles on Holocaust, This Purim, a space for queer Jews to celebrate their identities and dance the night away, Avi Maoz, Israeli politician and proud homophobe, resigns from deputy minister role, As Israel reels from violent attack on Palestinians, settler leadership remains unapologetic. The local chapter of the ADL sent a letter Wednesday calling on Davis to resign to allow the community to heal. The Oregon Board of Rabbis had previously called on Davis to step down. MSE News. 2023 jewish telegraphic agency all rights reserved. (Linfield students, on the other hand, are subject to the noblesse oblige and whims of Davis: The student handbook has a get-out-of-policy-free card for Davis, granting him the prerogative of total authority to act without consultation with any other person or conduct board to suspend or expel any student that Davis feels is acting contrary and dangerous to the university. But its logic more closely resembles spammy Internet advertising than a coherent application of law or policy: Tenured Faculty Members Hate This One Weird Trick! Daviss answer is wildly implausible on its face and incomprehensibly at odds with the basic conception of tenure. An open letter signed by more than 1,800 professors says that Linfield denied Pollack-Pelzner due process. Presented by FIRE and College Pulse, the 2022 College Free Speech Rankings is the largest survey of campus free expression ever performed. But then theres also, maybe, a reaction to who is bringing the change., Dr. Davis said he was particularly stung by the claims of anti-Semitism, calling it the thing that bothers me the most. Last year, he denied making the remark about Jewish noses, and an investigator hired by the university called it a he said, he said situation that could not be substantiated. Linfield President Davis responded Friday to the ADLs letter. Linfields administration does not get to pick and choose between the policies it has and the policies it wishes it had. Welcome to Linfield University Discover a community where acceptance is an unbreakable promise and being uncommon is the norm. 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