College Pays $50,000 to Professor Who Lost Job After Challenging Harassment Policy

September 6, 2011, 2:59 pm

East Georgia College has paid $50,000 to a former professor and his lawyers to settle a federal lawsuit filed by the professor, Thomas Thibeault, according to a news release issued by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which undertook a high-profile campaign in the professor’s defense. Mr. Thibeault, who had been a full-time English instructor, was accused of sexual harassment, suspended from his job, and escorted off the campus in August 2009, two days after he complained at a faculty meeting that the institution’s sexual-harassment policy offered no protection for professors who were falsely charged. The college later dropped the harassment charges and reinstated Mr. Thibeault, but administrators at the institution then chose not to renew his contract for the 2010-11 academic year. In his lawsuit, Mr. Thibeault accused the college of illegal retaliation.

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Guest

I am shocked that the professor only received $50K.
22280998

And what has been the penalty for the administrators involved in this vendetta?
tdb489

It is very unfortunate that the laws created by legislatures to protect us have become the very instruments by which our opponents destroy us. I do not know the people involved, but I know that young women will play the sexual harassment card to receive an undeserved grade. I also know that some professors are intentionally or unintentionally offensive in their displays of affection. Either way, many lives have been destroyed by some one’s libelous lies. This badly handled situation occurred because: 1) the law has been manipulated and distorted beyond recognition, 2)administrators lack the professional ethics, morality and skills to avoid retaliatory actions, and 3) the situation is so diabolical that some professors require professional assistance to avoid the abuse of all parties involved.
richardtaborgreene

The low quality of person being generated by the USA makes the doing of all jobs and positions of responsibility fraught with terrible danger. It might be wise to examine living and working in nations having higher quality people in their populations.
Guest

And people wonder why no one stood up against the Salem witch trials. Any faculty teaching in this area should review their syllabus to eliminate any sense of wonder. We are no wiser nor brave than those perched on the edge of a largely unknown continent.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_K23AU7JLMOWO66LC7U2FEMRGYE Cecil Turtle

Who in their right mind would stand up for a witch? I mean, unless it was Samantha Stevens or something. And it’s not like they didn’t get their day in court. Nope, I gotta go with the Salemites on that one.
Nonameworks

Excellent observation Wintoon.

While the administration and deans (Widener School of Law anyone?) continue to rule with impunity, true liberal thought and freedom are squashed and moved to the gutter in the name of diversity and the right not to be offended and the right to be stupid and the right to not have to use due process . . . .

And where are the people?

Watching Snooki.

(ROL is right — he should have gotten way more than $50,000.)
http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Macker/518709704 Brian Macker

When I think retaliation I think eye for an eye. This guy just expressed an opinion, which should have been met with another opinion. This wasn’t retaliation it was more like an unprovoked attack.
caradoc

It’s interesting that we look back in history at Salem and other idiocy and wonder how something like that could happen. All we need to understand it though is to look at the institutions of modern liberalism. Like that Monty Python skit, just replace an accused witch with an accused sexist or racist and the paralells become frighteningly obvious to anyone not afflicted with the ccontagious disease that is progressivism.
teapartydoc

What? Are you accusing the American university system of being a crooked liberal good ‘ol boys club that just throws out anyone that isn’t the right ideological color? Oh, right. We did already know that. I’d forgotten. Never mind.
GrimmyB

The Salem trials were awful, but claimed all of 25 lives.

Better question would be how Darwinism, in the form of modern Communism, was allowed to flourish, killing more than 120 million of it’s own citizens … In peacetime.

A “lesser” Darwinist, Hitler, killed only (!) 12 million. As evolutionist Sir Arthur Keith admits.
http://www.tempeteaparty.org Lee Reynolds

I’m not surprised that someone lied in order to shut him up.

The policies supposedly put in place on college campuses to deal with sexual harassment are actually a scheme to make simply being a man into a defacto crime. They want to create a policy in which one person can accuse another of a crime and see them convicted for it without any evidence of wrongdoing.

The impulse behind this is the desire to sow discord and animosity between men and women, and among the various identity groups in general. They want to promote tribal hatred because this is the best way to destroy society. Trick people into hating each other and they’ll destroy themselves. They don’t see racism and sexism and other such irrational sentiments as a problem, but as tools for the destruction of civil society.

It works like this. You give women the ability to abuse men by making the mere accusation of an ill defined and subjective crime tantamount to a conviction for it. Women who are evil and/or crazy begin using this newfound ability to attack men they don’t like, who are powerless to defend themselves. Other men see this happening and become angry. Some of them transfer this anger towards specific women into anger towards women in general. Other men simply live in fear of being targeted and avoid forming relationships with women. From there it snowballs.
wagnert

Flag on the play. Invocation of Godwin’s Law. Fifteen-yard penalty.
Nonameworks

If I am not mistaken, the point was we (the enlightened 20-21st century privileged) are so quick to condemn a less enlightened ["Christian!"] culture that would allow such obvious injustice. No one stood up and said “stop this!”

Now when a voice of reason questions the clergy of higher education they get professionally trashed, shamed, and terminated.
ruritania

Great; Kirk Cameron in academia.I call your banana and raise you a coconut. That someone can teach in college and make the connections you do is a very sad state of affairs.