The Week: What You Need to Know About the Past Seven Days

‘Ill-Tempered’

You can be forgiven if you had imagined that Simon P. Newman, president of Mount St. Mary’s University, wouldn’t be doing anything rash this month — not after making headlines in January with a quote about students being “cuddly bunnies” that sometimes “you just have to drown … put a Glock to their heads.” Not many college Boards of Trustees want their presidents to come off sounding like Donald J. Trump at a campaign rally, right?

But last week raised the possibility that Mr. Newman, a former private-equity-fund director, might actually be taking management cues from Mr. Trump, who became famous — as you surely remember — for sacking people on the reality-TV show The Apprentice. Mr. Newman fired two faculty members outright and may have fired a third (who was locked out of his email account, so he couldn’t be sure). The president also demoted the provost.

Mr. Newman wasn’t giving interviews, but his letter sacking one of the professors — Thane M. Naberhaus, an associate professor of philosophy — said Mr. Naberhaus owed “a duty of loyalty” to the university but had instead “caused considerable damage” to it. Presumably that damage came when Mr. Naberhaus (left) spoke out against Mr. Newman’s secretive attempt to improve retention statistics by getting rid of some academically underprepared freshmen before the date set by the U.S. Education Department for reporting fall enrollment.

Also dismissed was Ed Egan, director of the university’s prelaw program and adviser to the student newspaper, The Mountain Echo, which broke the story about Mr. Newman’s retention gambit in a special report last month. The faculty member who may have been fired was Gregory W. Murry, the assistant professor of history who repeated Mr. Newman’s comments about bunnies to the Echo reporters. The provost, David B. Rehm — who had raised concerns about the survey on which the retention plan was to be based — will return to the faculty as a professor of philosophy.

After the article appeared, Mr. Newman said his remarks had been taken out of context and defended his retention efforts, which he said aimed to identify students “who just don’t want to be here.” But John E. Coyne III, chair of the university’s board, took a harder line, writing that the trustees had “incontrovertible evidence of the existence of an organized, small group of faculty and recent alums working to undermine and ultimately cause the exit of President Newman.”

While Professor Naberhaus said he didn’t think of himself as a rabble rouser, he was escorted to his car by the same university security officer who delivered Mr. Newman’s letter firing him. Mount St. Mary’s “reserves the right to take legal action against you,” Mr. Newman wrote, going on to declare Mr. Naberhaus persona non grata. “As such, you are not welcome to visit the university’s campus or to attend any university activities or sporting events on the university’s property. Failure to comply with this directive will result in legal proceedings.” The letter firing Mr. Egan included similar language.

The American Association of University Professors wrote to Mr. Newman to protest his firing of Mr. Naberhaus without a hearing, and later in the week the professor received a second letter, this one asking him to meet with administrators to “explore the possibility of conciliation.” Meanwhile, thousands of faculty members signed an online statement in support of him and Mr. Egan. Also registering complaints were the Student Press Law Center and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Perhaps the most eloquent protest, however, was an essay by Patricia McGuire, president of another Roman Catholic institution, Trinity Washington University. She called Mr. Newman’s retention effort cynical and said his “firing of faculty members who came to the defense of the ‘drowning bunnies’” was an “ill-tempered” breach of faith. “Gaming the system by dismissing students culled through a cruel and deceptive survey administered at a time when first-year students are most vulnerable,” she added, “is the antithesis of true Catholic social justice.”

Enforcement Unit

President Obama released his budget proposal for the 2017 fiscal year last week, and congressional leaders promptly said they wouldn’t even bother inviting his budget director to Capitol Hill to talk about it because it was dead on arrival. Nonetheless it contains an interesting request from the Education Department for $13.6 million to create a Student Aid Enforcement Unit so the department can respond more quickly when colleges are accused of wrongdoing. The request comes as the department faces a big backlog of loan-forgiveness requests arising from the bankruptcy of Corinthian Colleges, the big for-profit provider. Department officials said that if Congress approved the new spending, they would ramp up hiring to tackle aid complaints.

The ‘New Normal’

For some big state universities, this isn’t turning out to be such a good year.

The University of California at Berkeley has announced a universitywide “strategic planning process” whose goal is to counter decreasing state support with new efforts to increase other revenue and cut costs. Berkeley’s chancellor, Nicholas B. Dirks, said that to deal with the challenges of the “new normal,” the university would put everything but faculty jobs and sports programs on the table and attempt to “reinvent” the idea of a public university.

Eastern Illinois University said last week that the state legislature’s continuing budget impasse would force the layoffs of 198 civil-service employees and require others to take one furlough day a week. David M. Glassman, the president, said the layoffs were “the direct result of not having an appropriation for EIU enacted by the state,” and of the university’s decision to honor the state grant commitments to needy students.

Departures

• Wheaton College, in Illinois, said it had “found a mutual place of resolution and reconciliation” with Larycia A. Hawkins, the associate professor of political science who was put on leave for saying on Facebook that Christians and Muslims worship the same god. The college, which maintained that the statement “seemed inconsistent with Wheaton College’s doctrinal convictions,” announced that Ms. Hawkins had signed a confidential agreement under which she will leave after nine years on the faculty.
• The highly public feud between the president of Suffolk University, Margaret A. McKenna, and the chair of its Board of Trustees, Andrew Meyer Jr., is being settled by an unusual deal in which they’ve both agreed to clear out. Mr. Meyer will leave the board when his term ends, in May, and Ms. McKenna, who just became president last year, will resign no later than the start of the 2017-18 academic year.

Plus This …

Two congressional committees are seeking three years’ worth of details about endowment spending by 56 of the richest private colleges and universities. … The parent company of the University of Phoenix, the Apollo Group, is selling itself to a “consortium of investors” for $1.1 billion. … Wellesley College has named its first black president: Paula A. Johnson, a professor at Harvard Medical School who manages a women’s-health program at the school and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. … The University of Tennessee’s student culture encourages sexual assaults by athletes and its adjudication process is biased against the victims, according to six women suing the university in federal court.

Lawrence Biemiller writes about a variety of usual and unusual higher-education topics. Reach him at lawrence.biemiller@chronicle.com.