In early July, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute pulled the plug on Donald Steiner’s e-mail account. Now the American Association of University Professors wants the university to reconnect the retired professor of nuclear engineering and engineering physics to the e-mail system.

The flap over the disconnected e-mail is the latest flashpoint in a continuing war between the administration and professors over faculty governance at Rensselaer. The provost, Robert E. Palazzo, shut down the institute’s Faculty Senate in September 2007, citing concerns about its possible interference in a review of university governance. The faculty voted overwhelmingly in favor of restoring the Faculty Senate shortly afterward.

In a letter dated September 5, Eric Combest, an associate secretary in the AAUP’s Department on Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance, deplored the move to strip Mr. Steiner of his e-mail access as “a severe sanction of a faculty member.” Mr. Combest also pointed out that “when such a sanction is imposed in the absence of due process, the action puts academic freedom at risk.”

According to the AAUP’s account, Rensselaer shut off Mr. Steiner’s e-mail access in July, when he retired. The association argues that such access is “typically provided to other emeritus professors,” and that the sanction resulted from Mr. Steiner’s strong criticism of administrators on a faculty e-mail list hosted by the institute.

The association’s letter states that the sanction was confirmed by the institute’s vice president for human resources in a letter to Mr. Steiner. That letter asserted he had broken Rensselaer’s “Policy on Electronic Citizenship.”

The AAUP’s letter represents the second time in a year that the association has weighed in on faculty-governance issues at Rensselaer. Last September the association sent a letter to the institute’s president, Shirley Ann Jackson, protesting the shutdown of the Faculty Senate. The association stated at the time that “we do not see how the administration’s actions to suspend the Faculty Senate and arrogate its key responsibilities to the administration can be reconciled with the principles of shared governance.”

In a reply to the association, the institute’s general counsel called the AAUP’s letter “an admittedly biased representation of an internal matter.”

Much of the turbulence at Rensselaer has followed sweeping changes at the institute carried out by Ms. Jackson in her nine-year tenure. Ironically, Mr. Steiner was in charge of planning Ms. Jackson’s inauguration as Rensselaer’s president. —Richard Byrne