He's already made headlines for telling his faculty to shoot their struggling students in the head, like "bunnies to be drowned", and now he's purporting to fire a tenured philosophy professor, Thane Naberhause, for lack of "loyalty." (IHE has more.) What deranged academic administrator thinks faculty have a contractual duty of "loyalty"? Naturally, a guy with an MBA from Stanford with no experience in academic administration at all. He is apparently confusing tenured faculty with the victims employed by companies he took over in pursuit of profit. Prof. Naberhause should retain counsel and should establish a fund for his legal fees for donations from those as appalled as I am about this brazen assault on the contractual rights of tenured faculty. The APA should be writing to the President, as should the AAUP (I trust both will). It's going to take a court of law to rein this lunatic in. Comments are open for more information, links, ideas, etc.
(Thanks to Mark Murphy and John Schwenkler for pointers.)
UPDATE: Via Prof. Schwenkler in the comments, a statement of protest (well-written, and with links to useful background information). Please sign, with title and institutional affiliation, so that at least the Board of Trustees at this institution can get a sense for the depth and breadth of concern about this.
ANOTHER: Here's a revealing article from the business press about Mr. Newman, when he took the job for which he so clearly isn't qualified.
