Rutgers University has suspended the noted evolutionary theorist Robert L. Trivers from teaching (with pay) and, according to Mr. Trivers, has begun proceedings that could lead to his being suspended without pay. Mr. Trivers had been teaching “Introduction to Social Evolution” and “Human Aggression” but was replaced, after one week this semester, by other instructors, according to the student newspaper The Daily Targum and Mr. Trivers himself.
Amy S. Jacobson, a visiting assistant professor and researcher in the anthropology department, confirmed the suspension and said she’d been asked to step in to teach “Human Aggression,” which she had taught before. The Targum said that the social-evolution course had been taken over by Lee Cronk, a professor of anthropology, who could not be immediately reached for comment.
In an interview with The Chronicle, Mr. Trivers reiterated much of what he’d told the Targum: that he’d complained to the administration about having to teach “Human Aggression,” a subject he says he knows little about, and that he’d explained the predicament to the students who showed up at the first lecture. He said he’d told the class that he’d do the best he could to learn the material along with the students, with the help of Ms. Jacobson, whom he’d asked to give several lectures.
When Rutgers officials informed him of the suspension, he said, they told him that he was effectively refusing to teach the course and inappropriately involving students in the dispute over the assignment.
Neither a spokesman for the university nor the chair of the anthropology department, Douglas H. Blair, would comment on the situation, on the grounds that the matter was a private personnel issue.
Mr. Trivers, who wrote highly influential papers in the early 1970s on subjects like sexual selection and altruism, and has since published such books as Genes in Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements (with Austin Burt, Harvard University Press, 2006), has had a contentious few years at Rutgers. In 2012 he was ordered to stay off the campus for five months after several alleged instances of threatening behavior, principally a heated face-to-face argument with Mr. Cronk. Mr. Trivers has denied that he threatened anyone.
Mr. Trivers and Mr. Cronk had been co-authors, with five other scholars, of an article in Nature, in 2005, that founded positive associations between physical symmetry in Jamaican men and dancing ability. Mr. Trivers said that the data in the article were flawed, and he lobbied for it to be retracted. He and Mr. Cronk apparently disagreed about how to handle revisiting the article, which was finally retracted in November 2013. Mr. Trivers said he was still required to avoid Mr. Cronk’s office and the surrounding area.
Mr. Trivers said he met with administrators last Thursday to discuss the matter, but declined to comment about the meeting, out of a fear of interfering with his formal discussions with the university, except to strongly deny that he was refusing to teach “Human Aggression.”