The Board of Trustees at Cedarville University has sided with the administration in its dismissal of a tenured Bible professor. In a statement issued this afternoon following a board meeting, the trustees said that the Baptist university in Ohio had observed its own guidelines when it fired David Hoffeditz for conduct toward students and colleagues that violated the terms of his contract. The statement did not specify the nature of that conduct.

The decision contradicted an earlier verdict of a faculty panel. In February the panel said the Bible department had been “unable to resolve its longstanding interpersonal and philosophical differences.” Mr. Hoffeditz is one of two Bible professors who were fired; the other professor, David Mappes, filed a grievance but then chose to suspend it.

There have been rumors that the firings were prompted by differences over doctrine — namely, over whether Christians can be certain of Biblical truth. The board’s statement said that such issues did not play a role in Mr. Hoffeditz’s dismissal.

Compounding the controversy, a secretly recorded conversation between a student and a senior administrator suggested that the university’s termination of the two tenured professors had been timed to avoid marring the institution’s accreditation process last year. The statement did not address that matter.

A spokesman for the university did not immediately return a call for comment. —Thomas Bartlett