Connecticut’s state Board of Regents for Higher Education has decided to let stand the promotion of a Central Connecticut State University professor who is serving time in prison, The Courant, in Hartford, reported.
The board met on Monday and decided not to take up a resolution that would have rescinded its approval last week of the university’s recommendation to promote the professor, Ravi Shankar, from tenured associate professor to full professor.
Mr. Shankar, who is a poet, is serving a segment of a 90-day “pretrial confinement” period for violating probation related to two previous arrests.
Michael Kozlowski, a spokesman for the Board of Regents, said that the board planned to review the procedures for promotions and tenure, but that the review is a general one. “The concern isn’t about Professor Shankar,” Mr. Kozlowski said.
The board has also asked Central Connecticut State to review how it recommended Mr. Shankar’s promotion.
Kozlowski said there is a small chance that if the investigation uncovers something “egregious” in the process that led to Shankar’s promotion, a factor that CCSU “overlooked” or did not give “full weight,” that the board might reconsider the promotion.
“But I would say it’s unlikely,” Kozlowski said. “As far as I’m concerned, it looks like it’s going to stand as a concrete promotion.”
Read more at: www.courant.com