Protesters Assail Duquesne Law Dean’s Ouster, as Letter Suggests Roots of Dispute

Nearly 200 people rallied at Duquesne University last Wednesday to protest the firing in December of the university’s law dean, Donald J. Guter, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

Some in the crowd called for the ouster of the university’s president, Charles J. Dougherty. Meanwhile, the president released a statement explaining his decision last month to order Mr. Guter to resign within 24 hours.

“A dean has two fundamental jobs,” he wrote. “One is to advocate for his or her school. The other is to perform as a part of the university’s administrative team and to effectively manage the school. Dean Guter could not and would not accept the second responsibility of his role as dean.”

Mr. Guter, who had been dean since 2005, is credited with helping raise students’ first-time bar-passage rate to 97 percent. His supporters contend that the president held a personal grudge against him because of disputes over law-school funds and personnel matters.

Meanwhile, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review published excerpts from a December 2007 letter that Duquesne’s president and provost wrote to the American Bar Association. The letter was in response to a highly critical report that Mr. Guter and law-school faculty members had sent to the bar association for its accreditation review. According to the letter from the president, the faculty members made unsubstantiated claims that Mr. Dougherty might have withheld, or effectively stolen, unused grant money for the law school.

“The exasperating aspect of this repeated slander of the university administration is not just its falsehood,” the administrators wrote. “It is also its venality.”

The dean’s firing prompted the law school’s associate dean, Vanessa Browne-Barbour, to resign in protest last week. Mr. Guter said the university’s provost had informed him before his ouster that he needed to demonstrate “absolute obedience” and loyalty to the administration.