The American Association of University Professors has issued investigative reports criticizing Cedarville University, in Ohio, and Olivet Nazarene University, in Illinois, over their treatment of tenured professors.
For its part, Cedarville, a Baptist institution, has returned fire, issuing statements denouncing the AAUP report as riddled with errors and reflecting a “historical bias against religious schools.”
Officials at Olivet Nazarene were unavailable for comment on Wednesday, but plan to respond to the report on their institution today.
The AAUP investigation of Cedarville focused on its July 2007 termination of David M. Hoffeditz, a tenured professor who was removed from his job in the biblical-studies department at a time when it was deeply divided over theological questions. The AAUP report concludes that Cedarville dismissed Mr. Hoffeditz without having demonstrated cause for its action in an adjudicative hearing, and says the university’s stated procedures for contesting dismissal denied him due process by, for example, placing the burden of proof on him and not allowing him a hearing before a body of faculty peers.
The report faults the administration of Cedarville more broadly. It says a lack of “meaningful shared governance,” combined with the administration’s bypassing of established channels of academic decision making and the lack of procedural safeguards against dismissal, “has resulted in a sense of insecurity and mistrust among faculty that is inimical to academic freedom.”
In its response, Cedarville calls the AAUP report “a prime example of a flawed document that does not contribute in any constructive manner to a sensitive and difficult issue.” It accuses the association’s investigators of relying on misstatements of fact to support predetermined conclusions, and argues that religiously affiliated institutions account for a disproportionately large share of the colleges the association has censured.
The AAUP report on Olivet Nazarene focuses on its May 2007 decision to suspend Richard Colling, a tenured professor of biology, from his usual responsibility of teaching a general biology class for nonmajors. The report concludes that the university took Mr. Colling out of the classroom and prohibited a book he had written from being used on the campus in response to objections by members of the Church of the Nazarene to his efforts to argue that belief in evolution is compatible with belief in God as creator.
The report says the university administration “placed a higher value on what the president calls ‘constituent relations’ than on the principles of academic freedom to which the university itself claims to subscribe.” —Peter Schmidt
Update (1/16): Olivet Nazarene University, which was closed for inclement weather shortly after the release of the AAUP report, has now issued a response. It argues that the AAUP report contains “factual and interpretive errors or omissions” and disputes the report’s conclusion that Mr. Colling’s academic freedom had been abridged.
