A scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls who is fighting dismissal from a graduate school of theology is alleging that his former employer inflated some of his students’ grades to retaliate against him.
The dispute pits Jamal-Dominique Hopkins, a former associate professor of the New Testament, against the Interdenominational Theological Center, a consortium of eight seminaries in Atlanta. The center awards master’s and doctoral degrees in such fields as divinity, Christian education, church music, ministry, and theology.
The center did not respond to multiple telephone and e-mail requests for comment.
Mr. Hopkins alleges that administrators at the center changed the grades of 10 of his 54 students last semester. A printout of a grading report provided by Mr. Hopkins, with students’ names redacted out, shows a number of marks changed from failing to passing.
Eight students received C’s after Mr. Hopkins initially assigned them D’s or F’s. Two enjoyed larger increases; one went from a D to an A-minus, while another was changed from an F to an A-minus.
Word of the changes apparently became common knowledge among the students. “I found out today that [redacted] received a grade change i [sic] want to know when my grade will be changed to a C+ are [sic] better,” one student wrote to Mr. Hopkins by e-mail.
“This is a suprise [sic] to me,” Mr. Hopkins wrote back. “You should contact the provost’s office in that they have now taken oversite [sic] of this matter.”
The student who sent the e-mail later had his grade changed from a D-plus to a C, said Mr. Hopkins’s lawyer, Joe C. Hopkins, who is also the professor’s father. The grade changes served a retaliatory purpose in that they undermined the professor’s authority, he said.
A Larger Discrimination Complaint
Mr. Hopkins’s accusations of grade manipulation are part of a larger complaint he filed last month with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He alleges in the complaint that he was dismissed without due process and discriminated against on the basis of his sex and evangelical faith. His dismissal followed an informal prayer meeting he held where, he says, “a book was shared that opposed homosexual-Christian lifestyles.”
Some students in Mr. Hopkins’s three classes—on the letters of the Apostle Paul, on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and on the Book of Revelation—had their grades allegedly improved even though they had failed to submit key assignments or to demonstrate graduate-level research or analytical skills, according to the professor.
One student was allowed to pass despite an initial grade of 28 percent on papers and assignments for the term.
Awarding such students passing grades is “an affront to the field of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship and an embarrassment,” the professor said in an e-mail.
Such alterations appear to defy both accepted practice and the center’s policy. The center’s faculty handbook reserves to professors the tasks of grading papers, marking examinations, and assigning grades.
The American Association of University Professors adopted a statement in 1998 affirming that faculty members should be the sole judges of their students’ grades. “Under no circumstances should administrative officers on their own authority substitute their judgment for that of the faculty concerning the assignment of a grade,” the statement reads.
Mr. Hopkins’s students complained to administrators that he was unresponsive to their requests to change their grades, according to records he provided. In those records, he disputes their characterization, saying that he had met with one student to discuss the student’s grade four times and had arranged meetings with two others who never showed up.
Beyond the professor’s accusations, the center faces broader criticisms. Its accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, put the center on warning in December 2011 for failing to meet several standards related to institutional effectiveness in such areas as its education programs, staffing, and finances.
The center anticipates resolving its compliance issues before its next review, according to a statement by Ronald E. Peters, the center’s president, that is posted on its Web site.