AAUP to investigate Melissa Click case

The executive director for the American Association of University Professors has authorized a formal investigation into Dr. Melissa Click’s dismissal from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

The UM Board of Curators dismissed Click in February, following her actions at two protests in 2014. According to the AAUP, a faculty member with “indefinite tenure, or a probationary faculty member within the term of appointment, may be dismissed only following demonstration of cause in an adjudicative hearing before a faculty body.”

The AAUP will send three members to Columbia later in March to meet with Click, administrators, and faculty leaders. Depending on the results of the investigation, the AAUP may vote later this year to censure the UM administration. If that happens, the AAUP would make public its findings that “unsatisfactory conditions of academic freedom and tenure have been found to prevail” at the University of Missouri.