AAUP Accuses U. of Missouri System of Violating Melissa Click’s Rights

Whitney Curtis for The Chronicle

The University of Missouri system’s Board of Curators violated the due-process rights of Melissa A. Click in firing her over her conduct during last fall’s student protests on the Columbia campus, the American Association of University Professors concludes in a report released on Thursday.

The report, by an AAUP investigative panel, says the board violated basic principles of academic due process by firing Ms. Click without a faculty hearing after she was videotaped aggressively confronting a student journalist and calling for “muscle” to have him removed from the campus quad, where protesters had gathered to speak out against the university’s racial climate.

The board also violated the rights of Ms. Click, who had been an assistant professor of communication, by cutting off her pay immediately after her dismissal, rather than giving her at least one year’s salary or notice, the report says.

The Missouri board on Wednesday issued a point-by-point rebuttal of the AAUP report’s findings. In an accompanying statement, Pamela Q. Henrickson, the board’s chairwoman, said it stands behind its actions regarding Ms. Click, “which were in the best interests of the university.”

Ms. Henrickson said the AAUP’s report “disregards the seriousness of her misconduct and reaches inconsistent and unsupported conclusions.” She argued that the board had “provided Dr. Click due process throughout the review,” including “multiple opportunities to respond on her own behalf” and to suggest favorable witnesses for interviews.

‘A Dangerous Precedent’

The AAUP report, which lays the groundwork for a potential vote by the association to censure the Missouri board, says the curators’ decision to fire Ms. Click without a faculty hearing “set a dangerous precedent that threatens the academic freedom of all faculty members at the University of Missouri.”

“While the investigating committee cannot exclude the possibility that a review of the case by a representative faculty body might have produced a result similar to that reached by the curators, the committee is not convinced that Professor Click’s actions, even when viewed in the most unfavorable light, were adequate grounds for her dismissal,” the report concludes.

It says the AAUP’s investigators had “reason to suspect that grounds other than Professor Click’s actions were the real cause for her dismissal,” because state lawmakers “exerted undue influence” in her case by demanding her summary firing and threatening to cut the university’s budget.

‘An Easy Target’

In an April letter to the AAUP in response to a draft version of the report, Ms. Henrickson called the document “an apparent attempt to protect a faculty member who undisputedly engaged in misconduct” that the AAUP “should condemn, not blindly defend.”

“Dr. Click assaulted one of our students and encouraged others to physically intimidate him; she excluded people from a public space where they had a right to be present; and she interfered with freedom of the press at the university that is home to the world’s oldest journalism school,” Ms. Henrickson wrote.

She said the board had taken action “after waiting months for faculty or administration to address her conduct” and after Ms. Click had been criminally charged by a city prosecutor. (Ms. Click was charged with assault, pleaded not guilty, and agreed to do community service to avoid prosecution.)

For her part, Ms. Click has offered apologies for her actions and has blamed her dismissal on racial politics, arguing that she became “an easy target” as a white woman standing up for black students.

The AAUP had weighed in on Ms. Click’s behalf early in her dispute with her employer, challenging the university’s decision to suspend her soon after her clash with the student journalist. The group’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure will decide in early June whether to call on association members to vote to censure the university’s administration at the AAUP’s annual meeting later in the month.

Peter Schmidt writes about affirmative action, academic labor, and issues related to academic freedom. Contact him at peter.schmidt@chronicle.com.