AAUP investigating Professor Melissa Click’s termination
Days after professor Melissa Click was fired in February, the American Association of University Professors sent a letter to interim chancellor Hank Foley asking the UM Board of Curators to rescind Click’s firing.
AAUP’s investigating committee consists of three AAUP members from other institutions. They visited Columbia earlier this week to meet with administrators, board members, faculty leaders, and Melissa Click.
AAUP said they will determine if Click’s firing violated academic procedural standards as well as MU’s own policy.
They will then submit a report of their findings to AAUP’s committee on academic freedom and tenure. That committee will decide whether the UM administration should be censored at its annual meeting in June.
“The association’s censure list is basically just a public signal that conditions for academic freedom and tenure at the institution are not satisfactory,” said Hans-Joerg Tiede, AAUP’s Associate Secretary.
The University’s Faculty Council agrees that the procedure of firing Melissa Click was not typical but that does not mean the University will make the list.
The chair of the faculty council, Ben Trachtenberg said, “The AAUP has its standard practices to which Mizzou normally adheres, but did not in the Melissa Click case. I think the AAUP is going to come in and say, ‘Did the University do what its supposed to do?’ And the answer is probably going to be no. That doesn’t mean that we have to be censured.”
The faculty council also said that being put on the list will probably not deter any potential faculty members because professor positions are very few and far between.
“Our goal following a censor is to work with the governing board, to work with the administration, to see to it that new policies are adopted to make that impossible to reoccur and to see to it that there is some measure redress provided to the affected faculty member.”
According to Tiede, it wouldn’t be the first time the University of Missouri would be on the list.
It also happened in 1945 and 1973. The most recent censure happened while college campuses across the country were protesting the Vietnam War.
“Two other veterans and I decided to have a hunger strike at the columns on Monday morning,” said Bill Wickersham, who was an MU assistant professor at the time in 1970. “As things began to develop it was clear we didn’t just need to have a hunger strike. People were going to come anyway. By 10 o’clock we had about 1,000 students, by 11 o’clock we probably had about 3,000 students.”
In May of 1970, Wickersham and seven MU sociology professors were docked money from their paychecks or lost their tenure for their involvement in the protests. AAUP investigated and determined the university denied the professors’ academic due process.
On April 23, 1973, the committee unanimously voted to add the university to the censure list. It was removed from the list in 1980.
“That’s exactly like Ms. Click’s situation,” he said. “Whether you’re right or wrong you have to have due process. AAUP always insists that there’s faculty input and you don’t just go to the president, or the chancellor, or the board of curators.”
