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Depends on the public statements by the university and whether they followed established policy. If the slandered him or unfairly harmed his reputation, they c

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

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.