Community-College Professor Is Fired After Making a Nazi Salute at a System Meeting

A business professor at a community college in Connecticut was fired on Thursday after he compared administrators to Nazis, and made a Nazi salute for about 10 minutes, at a November meeting of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system.

Paul Broadie II, president of Housatonic Community College, fired Charles Meyrick, an assistant professor of business and economics, after the institution found Meyrick to have engaged in “serious misconduct.”

Meyrick did not respond to a request for comment from The Chronicle. An investigative report quoted by the Associated Press said he later explained his behavior as justified by the “tyrannical and wrong” actions of the meeting’s leaders.

Meyrick became upset when the meeting turned to talk of a plan to merge the system’s 12 institutions.

He appeared agitated, but according to those present at the meeting, his actions were not far removed from his “increasingly alarming behavior.”

“The reports of a faculty member’s outburst at a meeting last week, including the use of a Nazi salute, which required campus police to respond, are appalling and unacceptable,” Mark E. Ojakian, president of the system, said in a statement to the Hartford Courant. Ojakian said that the professor’s action “does not fit with our community’s culture and values; we must hold ourselves to a higher standard of civility, decency, and respect.”

The president said faculty and staff members had reached out to him with their concerns after the outburst.

The college placed Meyrick on paid leave after the incident.

Correction (1/25/2019, 12:48 p.m.): This article originally misstated Meyrick’s professorial rank. He was an assistant professor, not an associate professor. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.

Follow Lily Jackson on Twitter at @lilygjack, or email her at lily.jackson@chronicle.com.