MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 9--UPDATED WITH SOME MORE INFORMATION
Various readers sent me this letter from Professor Boghossian describing his alleged reasons for resigning. If, in fact, he was treated in the ways described, that is pretty outrageous, but it would be good to have independent confirmation from another source. (He has been an assistant professor since 2014, which is a rather long time at that rank, so it would be good to know what the story is with that as well.) Some of the "illiberal" campus environment is obviously real at many places, although rarely to the extent he describes. On the other hand, a professor at Portland State revealed in the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education that she literally has no idea what academic freedom is, so maybe things really are that bad there?
UPDATE (9/14/21): A faculty member at Portland State writes with some useful context and perspective:
Peter was not a tenure-line faculty at PSU. PSU has an unusual status for non- t-t faculty that they can apply for the same titles as tenure-line faculty. I believe it was 2014 that he got that title (after having been an Instructor for I believe six years before that), but because he is not on the tenure track, he could have kept it indefinitely. In fact, he did decide to apply for promotion to "Associate Professor" last year, but was denied.
The level of the University's mistreatment of him as reported in his letter might be weighed against the fact that he was re-hired every year for the past dozen years, and that he was promoted as far as he was. (It might be noted that Peter does not have a Ph.D. in philosophy; his Ed.D. is in education from PSU itself.) In the words of a colleague of mine, he had long been hoping that the University would fire him so that he could make a martyr of himself, but seeing that that was not going to happen, he had to fire himself.
Peter was in fact harassed by one particular student who filed a Title IX complaint, but I am not in a position to evaluate whether the University's response was reasonable. (As you can probably tell, I am skeptical of Peter's own interpretations of these situations.) My own overall sense is that the free-speech situation at PSU is not much different than that at most other universities. But because we are Portland, FoxNews loves to amplify any whiff of impropriety, and Peter is aware that his letter would be an effective form of self-promotion.
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