8 ms·

I suspect the problem lay with the professor’s response to the student, as opposed to anything else (and that’s actually what the UCLA statement mentioned says)

I suspect the problem lay with the professor’s response to the student, as opposed to anything else (and that’s actually what the UCLA statement mentioned says), but as described here, the response, as a ill advised as it was, hardly merits any action. This is an unfortunate situation where largely things worked the way they were supposed to. Somebody raised a stink. The administration took time to investigate it. Found nothing and within 3 weeks dismissed the complaints. It sucks, but sometimes shit happens. Especially in academia. The problem appears to be that the 3 week suspension led to the professor’s income from unrelated work being affected. I highly doubt that this lawsuit will succeed. This is the process everyone in academia (and if they are lucky in private companies as well...private companies don’t even promise an investigation...their at will contracts mean they can simply terminate your position) agrees to and it works well, as it did in this case. The issue lies with the private companies the professor makes money from outside the university, who he has at will and temporary contracts with, which allow him to be terminated for no reason. Of course, the irony is that contrary to the professor’s claims, the entity he is suing completely protected him. It’s the at will contracts with the private companies that are the cause of his loss of income. If UCLA operated like a private company he wouldn’t have had a suspension with an investigation. His contract would simply have been terminated.

anonuser123456 5y ago
Depends on the public statements by the university and whether they followed established policy. If the slandered him or unfairly harmed his reputation, they could very well be liable for economic loss.
- MerelyMortal 5y ago
  IANAL, but it seems like from the PDF copy of the complaint, the university did not follow policy, in fact they disregarded a warning not to take action against the professor. The copy-and-pasted emails contained in the complaint also sound like slander to me.
  - filmgirlcw 5y ago
    The warning said “further inquiry is warranted before action can be taken.” That inquiry is what happened when he was placed on administrative leave. And less than three weeks later, he was reinstated. He's classifying it as a suspension but the university is going to say this was an investigation. A court will decide who is correct, assuming this isn’t thrown out on its face (which is what I am betting will happen). He doesn’t have tenure, which makes his rights at UCLA even more tenuous as it is — the university could have just opted not to renew his contract. But they took him off administrative leave and found he hadn’t violated any policies after the inquiry that HR recommended. We don’t know if the university followed policy or not. Nothing in the complaint proves that it didn’t, and it could very well be read that it did, based on the facts he made in the claim.
    - MerelyMortal 5y ago
      Isn't placing someone on administrative leave, taking action?
- addicted 5y ago
  Completely agreed. Except, he doesn’t claim any of that in the article. He claims he lost his private contracts because he was suspended. Which I would be highly surprised if it wasn’t just straightforward policy. At least the college I studied at 2 decades ago had a pretty mechanical suspension policy while investigations were done for certain category of complaints from students (at the time this was usually sexual misconduct, but racism/sexism/etc were probably also included).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - rewma 5y ago
    > He claims he lost his private contracts because he was suspended. No, not really. He claims that he lost the lion's share of his income because the Anderson administration not only suspended him but also started attacking his character on social media based on the meritless accusations of racism. From the blog post: > You see, most of my income comes not from teaching at UCLA but from consulting to law firms and other corporations. Several of those firms dropped me after they got wind that I’d been suspended — the better to put distance between themselves and a “racist.” That cost me the lion’s share of my annual income. The students involved in this escapade may have moved on to other causes. I have not. I’m not sure I ever will. His blog post is quite clear on the path he is taking the law suit: he was subjected to attacks and abuse for not complying with requests to grant special priviledges to some students, and the Anderson administration proceeded to throw him under the bus as a scapegoat to avoid their institutional pattern of non-inclusiveness. Consequently, the actions taken by the Anderson administration ultimately caused him to lose the lion's share of his income.
MerelyMortal 5y ago
I highly recommend reading the (albeit long) PDF copy of the complaint. It is not cut-and-dry like your comment makes it out to be. According to the complaint, warnings by UCLA to not take action against the professor, were ignored. So it was not "an unfortunate situation where largely things worked the way they were supposed to".
- filmgirlcw 5y ago
  You don’t appear to have read the complaint correctly. He was placed on administrative leave so the university could investigate the issue — that isn’t the same as a suspension. It also completely aligns with HR's comment that “further inquiry is warranted before action can be taken.” An inquiry happened, the non-tenured professor was found to have not violated any of the guidelines and was reinstated. The publicity surrounding his email does appear to have had an averse effect on his contracts unrelated to his post at UCLA, that is absolutely true. I’m still not seeing how him losing business opportunities because of bad publicity, caused in part by his own actions, is the university's fault. I agree with OP.
  - teorema 5y ago
    My guess is he would say UCLA crossed a line with the public response: "So, even though a university administrator made it clear the university could not take any action against me — on the grounds that there was no known cause for taking such action — Anderson’s Dean Antonio Bernardo took matters into his own hands. He apparently reasoned that a well-timed publicity stunt might distract attention away from the school’s reputation as an inhospitable place for persons of color — to say nothing of its plummeting rankings in U.S. News and World Report and Bloomberg Businessweek. Without any deliberation I was aware of, Bernardo suspended and banned me from campus. Then, like a well-choreographed dance, the Anderson administration started attacking my character on social media. As I documented in my legal claim, on June 3, one day after I received the first email, the Anderson School’s Twitter account sent out a message: “Respect and equality for all are core principles at UCLA Anderson. It is deeply disturbing to learn of this email, which we are investigating. We apologize to the students who received it and to all those who have been as upset and offended by it as we are ourselves.” This implied I didn’t believe in equality for all — when that was exactly what I believed and continues to believe. " That is, if you're doing an investigation of something against internal advice, the appropriate response on twitter is nothing or something very nonspecific, like "we have no comment". The reason for this is exactly what this lawyer is claiming. My prediction is this gets settled out of court.
jollybean 5y ago
"I suspect the problem lay with the professors response to the student, as opposed to anything else" Please let's not go there. The initial request was pretty bold and condescending. The response was slightly ill mannered, but that's just tone. Both the request and response were within bounds however. 'The problem' is not 'the Professor' - it's an institution that enables radical elements of the student body who generally don't speak for the group at large, or who intimidate otherwise, to dictate authoritarian terms. This is due to fear, the fact that students are seen as 'customers' instead of students, and, frankly that a not insignificant number of faculty side with the students. By your own account is seems reasonable the prof didn't do something very wrong, in which case, the reasonable thing to do would have him publish another, conciliatory note and then move on. The Prof. was arbitrarily maligned, frankly in trying to uphold what he believed was actual law, I don't know why you would think that companies are protected from defamation/libel/slander. We'll have to see how that works out. [1] https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/personal-injury/harm-to-reputation/defamation/ https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/personal-injury/harm-to-reputat...
- addicted 5y ago
  The only institution that acted against him were the private corporations he was moonlighting with. UCLA, the entity he is suing, reinstated him without any consequences within 3 weeks. I’ve personally been suspended for a lot less (actually, for being the victim) in a college setting.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    "The only institution that acted against him " UCLA acted against him - by irresponsibility suspending him for issues regarding supposed racial insensitivity, which were without merit. His suspension caused him to lose revenue, hence the problem. The suspension could be a form of libel i.e. false information published about him, causing him damages. I should add that it's obviously more complicated if he's 'cleared' of something but the libelous damanges linger anyhow.
- addicted 5y ago
  If he was maligned then why doesn’t he claim that? He claims the act of suspension is what led to him losing his private contracts. Not slander or being maligned. Suspension is a normal part of university investigations that everyone agrees to. The fact that hoti are companies that employ him are able to use that to terminate his at will employment or contract with them says nothing about UCLA doing anything wrong.
filmgirlcw 5y ago
I’m in total agreement. Look, in my opinion, the initial ask from the student was completely absurd and ridiculous, especially in a class where the only thing graded is the final. I understand the student's motivations and sympathize, but sending a form letter was inappropriate and the ask, as I said, in my opinion, is ridiculous. That said, the professor, a professional who boasts 40 years of experience, used poor judgment with his response. That doesn't make him wrong, per se, but it was poor judgment to reply in that way, especially given the sociopolitical climate last summer. A guy who only uses non-tenured (and thus, poor paying) UCLA role to get clients for his external businesses should know better than engaging in this sort of stuff. Again, it doesn’t make him wrong, but it was poor judgment. The social media flare-up that the university felt compelled to address happened because students shared the information. The university made an investigation, found he didn’t do anything wrong, and he faced no disciplinary action. But the fallout that social media flare-up had on his own reputation, to the point he lost moonlighting contracts, didn’t happen because the university tweeted some sanguine tweets about respect and equality and that an investigation was under way. His name was never even mentioned in those statements. People who fired him, fired him because of the Change.org stuff, not UCLA Anderson's tweets. I think it is unfortunate that a benign email (even if it was poor judgment to send) went viral the way it did. But I fail to see how the university, or anyone, is legally culpable for private companies choosing not to retain his services.
- jsiepkes 5y ago
  > I think it is unfortunate that a benign email (even if it was poor judgment to send) went viral the way it did. But I fail to see how the university, or anyone, is legally culpable for private companies choosing not to retain his services. If the e-mail was (as you stated) "benign" and what the student asked was (again, your own assessment) "completely absurd and ridiculous" then suspending someone (even with pay) pending investigation could easily be seen as an overreaction in court. The professor also made a case that his employer had something to gain from this overreaction. And he is making the case he lost something due to this overreaction.
bubblethink 5y ago
> the irony is that contrary to the professor’s claims, the entity he is suing completely protected him That's a stretch. A tenured professor at a public university not losing his job over some drivel hardly constitutes as being protected.

anonuser123456 5y ago

Depends on the public statements by the university and whether they followed established policy. If the slandered him or unfairly harmed his reputation, they could very well be liable for economic loss.

MerelyMortal 5y ago
IANAL, but it seems like from the PDF copy of the complaint, the university did not follow policy, in fact they disregarded a warning not to take action against the professor. The copy-and-pasted emails contained in the complaint also sound like slander to me.
- filmgirlcw 5y ago
  The warning said “further inquiry is warranted before action can be taken.” That inquiry is what happened when he was placed on administrative leave. And less than three weeks later, he was reinstated. He's classifying it as a suspension but the university is going to say this was an investigation. A court will decide who is correct, assuming this isn’t thrown out on its face (which is what I am betting will happen). He doesn’t have tenure, which makes his rights at UCLA even more tenuous as it is — the university could have just opted not to renew his contract. But they took him off administrative leave and found he hadn’t violated any policies after the inquiry that HR recommended. We don’t know if the university followed policy or not. Nothing in the complaint proves that it didn’t, and it could very well be read that it did, based on the facts he made in the claim.
  - MerelyMortal 5y ago
    Isn't placing someone on administrative leave, taking action?
addicted 5y ago
Completely agreed. Except, he doesn’t claim any of that in the article. He claims he lost his private contracts because he was suspended. Which I would be highly surprised if it wasn’t just straightforward policy. At least the college I studied at 2 decades ago had a pretty mechanical suspension policy while investigations were done for certain category of complaints from students (at the time this was usually sexual misconduct, but racism/sexism/etc were probably also included).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rewma 5y ago
  > He claims he lost his private contracts because he was suspended. No, not really. He claims that he lost the lion's share of his income because the Anderson administration not only suspended him but also started attacking his character on social media based on the meritless accusations of racism. From the blog post: > You see, most of my income comes not from teaching at UCLA but from consulting to law firms and other corporations. Several of those firms dropped me after they got wind that I’d been suspended — the better to put distance between themselves and a “racist.” That cost me the lion’s share of my annual income. The students involved in this escapade may have moved on to other causes. I have not. I’m not sure I ever will. His blog post is quite clear on the path he is taking the law suit: he was subjected to attacks and abuse for not complying with requests to grant special priviledges to some students, and the Anderson administration proceeded to throw him under the bus as a scapegoat to avoid their institutional pattern of non-inclusiveness. Consequently, the actions taken by the Anderson administration ultimately caused him to lose the lion's share of his income.

MerelyMortal 5y ago

I highly recommend reading the (albeit long) PDF copy of the complaint. It is not cut-and-dry like your comment makes it out to be. According to the complaint, warnings by UCLA to not take action against the professor, were ignored. So it was not "an unfortunate situation where largely things worked the way they were supposed to".

filmgirlcw 5y ago
You don’t appear to have read the complaint correctly. He was placed on administrative leave so the university could investigate the issue — that isn’t the same as a suspension. It also completely aligns with HR's comment that “further inquiry is warranted before action can be taken.” An inquiry happened, the non-tenured professor was found to have not violated any of the guidelines and was reinstated. The publicity surrounding his email does appear to have had an averse effect on his contracts unrelated to his post at UCLA, that is absolutely true. I’m still not seeing how him losing business opportunities because of bad publicity, caused in part by his own actions, is the university's fault. I agree with OP.
- teorema 5y ago
  My guess is he would say UCLA crossed a line with the public response: "So, even though a university administrator made it clear the university could not take any action against me — on the grounds that there was no known cause for taking such action — Anderson’s Dean Antonio Bernardo took matters into his own hands. He apparently reasoned that a well-timed publicity stunt might distract attention away from the school’s reputation as an inhospitable place for persons of color — to say nothing of its plummeting rankings in U.S. News and World Report and Bloomberg Businessweek. Without any deliberation I was aware of, Bernardo suspended and banned me from campus. Then, like a well-choreographed dance, the Anderson administration started attacking my character on social media. As I documented in my legal claim, on June 3, one day after I received the first email, the Anderson School’s Twitter account sent out a message: “Respect and equality for all are core principles at UCLA Anderson. It is deeply disturbing to learn of this email, which we are investigating. We apologize to the students who received it and to all those who have been as upset and offended by it as we are ourselves.” This implied I didn’t believe in equality for all — when that was exactly what I believed and continues to believe. " That is, if you're doing an investigation of something against internal advice, the appropriate response on twitter is nothing or something very nonspecific, like "we have no comment". The reason for this is exactly what this lawyer is claiming. My prediction is this gets settled out of court.

jollybean 5y ago

"I suspect the problem lay with the professors response to the student, as opposed to anything else" Please let's not go there. The initial request was pretty bold and condescending. The response was slightly ill mannered, but that's just tone. Both the request and response were within bounds however. 'The problem' is not 'the Professor' - it's an institution that enables radical elements of the student body who generally don't speak for the group at large, or who intimidate otherwise, to dictate authoritarian terms. This is due to fear, the fact that students are seen as 'customers' instead of students, and, frankly that a not insignificant number of faculty side with the students. By your own account is seems reasonable the prof didn't do something very wrong, in which case, the reasonable thing to do would have him publish another, conciliatory note and then move on. The Prof. was arbitrarily maligned, frankly in trying to uphold what he believed was actual law, I don't know why you would think that companies are protected from defamation/libel/slander. We'll have to see how that works out. [1] https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/personal-injury/harm-to-reputation/defamation/ https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/personal-injury/harm-to-reputat...

addicted 5y ago
The only institution that acted against him were the private corporations he was moonlighting with. UCLA, the entity he is suing, reinstated him without any consequences within 3 weeks. I’ve personally been suspended for a lot less (actually, for being the victim) in a college setting.
- jollybean 5y ago
  "The only institution that acted against him " UCLA acted against him - by irresponsibility suspending him for issues regarding supposed racial insensitivity, which were without merit. His suspension caused him to lose revenue, hence the problem. The suspension could be a form of libel i.e. false information published about him, causing him damages. I should add that it's obviously more complicated if he's 'cleared' of something but the libelous damanges linger anyhow.
addicted 5y ago
If he was maligned then why doesn’t he claim that? He claims the act of suspension is what led to him losing his private contracts. Not slander or being maligned. Suspension is a normal part of university investigations that everyone agrees to. The fact that hoti are companies that employ him are able to use that to terminate his at will employment or contract with them says nothing about UCLA doing anything wrong.

filmgirlcw 5y ago

I’m in total agreement. Look, in my opinion, the initial ask from the student was completely absurd and ridiculous, especially in a class where the only thing graded is the final. I understand the student's motivations and sympathize, but sending a form letter was inappropriate and the ask, as I said, in my opinion, is ridiculous. That said, the professor, a professional who boasts 40 years of experience, used poor judgment with his response. That doesn't make him wrong, per se, but it was poor judgment to reply in that way, especially given the sociopolitical climate last summer. A guy who only uses non-tenured (and thus, poor paying) UCLA role to get clients for his external businesses should know better than engaging in this sort of stuff. Again, it doesn’t make him wrong, but it was poor judgment. The social media flare-up that the university felt compelled to address happened because students shared the information. The university made an investigation, found he didn’t do anything wrong, and he faced no disciplinary action. But the fallout that social media flare-up had on his own reputation, to the point he lost moonlighting contracts, didn’t happen because the university tweeted some sanguine tweets about respect and equality and that an investigation was under way. His name was never even mentioned in those statements. People who fired him, fired him because of the Change.org stuff, not UCLA Anderson's tweets. I think it is unfortunate that a benign email (even if it was poor judgment to send) went viral the way it did. But I fail to see how the university, or anyone, is legally culpable for private companies choosing not to retain his services.

jsiepkes 5y ago
> I think it is unfortunate that a benign email (even if it was poor judgment to send) went viral the way it did. But I fail to see how the university, or anyone, is legally culpable for private companies choosing not to retain his services. If the e-mail was (as you stated) "benign" and what the student asked was (again, your own assessment) "completely absurd and ridiculous" then suspending someone (even with pay) pending investigation could easily be seen as an overreaction in court. The professor also made a case that his employer had something to gain from this overreaction. And he is making the case he lost something due to this overreaction.

bubblethink 5y ago

> the irony is that contrary to the professor’s claims, the entity he is suing completely protected him That's a stretch. A tenured professor at a public university not losing his job over some drivel hardly constitutes as being protected.