Why 2 Tenured Faculty Members Were Dismissed After a Departmental Dispute

Late last year, two tenured professors, a husband and wife, found themselves the focus of a departmental storm at a liberal-arts college in Austin, Tex.

The communications department at St. Edward’s University had been without permanent leadership for some time, and the faculty was getting antsy. A nomination process for interim chair had pitted faculty members against one another. Frustrations were mounting.

The tensions escalated to the point of no return for the couple, Shannan Butler and Corinne Weisgerber, during a December 2017 department meeting that led to a heated exchange. One month later, they were both dismissed.

But the tensions continue with the release on Thursday of an investigative report by the American Association of University Professors. The AAUP concluded that the couple had probably been dismissed because of their outspoken criticism of the administration. The faculty group also wrote that the terminations contributed to an environment of “abysmal” academic freedom and a lack of shared governance at St. Edward’s.

Intradepartmental conflicts like what happened at St. Edward’s are relatively common. But in this case, the spat resulted in two tenured professors’ losing their jobs.

How did two tenured professors end up in a battle with their university?

The couple met during their Ph.D. programs at Pennsylvania State University and married in 2004. Their career trajectories followed nearly identical paths. They were both hired by St. Edward’s in 2006, promoted to associate professors in 2012, tenured in 2013, and fired — together, in the same room — in 2018.

They were viewed as “one and the same person,” Weisgerber said.

In 2016 the duo were both reprimanded in a meeting with Sharon Nell, dean of the school of humanities, the AAUP report says. The dean scolded them for their behavior toward a colleague, Teri Lynn Varner, an associate professor of communication and interim department chair at the time, according to the AAUP report.

Butler, one of the dismissed professors, vied with Varner for the interim-chair position. The nomination process wasn’t pretty, Butler said. In the end, Varner secured the appointment.

The contentious race was a contributing factor in the couple’s dismissal. The termination letters say the duo “launched an attack” on the decision to appoint Varner as interim chair. The letters also state that the attack included “efforts which constituted harassment, bullying, and attempts at intimidation.”

The couple denies those claims. Butler said he had never intimidated his colleague.

‘You and I Are Not OK’

To demonstrate that he is not a bully, he provided to The Chronicle an email he wrote to Varner in September 2016.

After wishing her a “pleasant Labor Day weekend,” he wrote: “I find it imperative to my own wellness to make it clear that you and I are not OK, and that we will not be OK until you explain to me what happened during the last weeks of the spring semester,” he wrote, in reference to the interim-chair selection process.

Butler accused Varner of “splintering the department” for personal gain and “denying the department the ability to self-govern.” Before ending his email with a request for an apology, he wrote that he was willing to risk any repercussions that might result from the note.

A few weeks after Butler’s message to Varner, Weisgerber and Butler were called into a meeting with Nell, who reprimanded their recent behavior.

“It is important to me and my colleagues to work in a supportive and respectful environment, and to support one another in maintaining that environment,” said Richard J. Bautch, a humanities professor and an associate dean, in an email statement.

Following those incidents, the pair kept their distance from Varner. But the conflict erupted during a December 2017 departmental meeting, according to the report.

The meeting, to which Weisgerber brought homemade chocolate-chip and pecan-buttermilk cookies, was at first business as usual. Things changed when a question was asked about the future of the department, a topic not on the agenda.

Weisgerber said she had prompted the question by asking Bautch if he “thought it was a good idea to put the department on pause for five years.”

Bautch said the question made him feel singled out and discriminated against, Weisgerber said. She said his response felt rehearsed.

According to their termination letters, the couple intimidated Bautch and attacked his personal judgement during the meeting. The chaos didn’t end there.

The pair asked Varner to remain in the room following the meeting, Weisgerber said, and then things got heated. Department members heard shouting, according to the report.

The two professors were called into a meeting on January 9, 2018. They were handed nearly identical letters of termination. The letters said the couple had shown a “continued disrespect and disregard for the mission and goals of the university.”

The couple promptly appealed to the university’s president and a review committee. They each submitted “point by point” and “exhaustive” appeal documents, according to the AAUP report. In their appeals, they rebutted the university’s claim that they were “counseled repeatedly to correct” their behavior.

Butler and Weisgerber said the university had refused to provide specific examples of their alleged behavior. “There was no conversation,” according to the report.

In a written statement to The Chronicle, Varner said she supports the university’s decision to dismiss faculty members, including those with tenure, who create distress in the workplace.

“While I, of course, understand the concern colleagues at other institutions might feel about the dismissal of two tenured faculty members,” she said. “I also believe it is important to think carefully about what tenure means or should mean.”

The couple’s initial appeal was denied. They appealed again to the institutional-oversight and academic-affairs committee of the Board of Trustees. The professors argued that St. Edward’s had violated minimum standards for protecting tenure rights. That appeal was also denied.

‘Heavy-Handedness’

The incidents at St. Edward’s impede academic governance and freedom, according to the AAUP report. The investigation found that the two professors had been fired without academic due process. The couple could have been dismissed because of their “persistent outspokenness about administrative decision and actions,” the AAUP’s investigative committee wrote.

“The administration’s heavy-handedness has created widespread fear and demoralization among faculty,” the report says.

The AAUP also investigated the case of Katie Peterson, an assistant professor on the tenure track at St. Edward’s. Her appointment was not renewed by the university after the 2017-18 academic year. The AAUP concluded that the nonrenewal could have been based in part on a sexual-harassment complaint she had filed against an associate dean.

The university continues to reject Weisgerber and Butler’s arguments. In a statement to The Chronicle, the institution rejected the AAUP’s findings: “St. Edward’s has a robust commitment to tenure and academic freedom.”

“The AAUP attempts to take personnel matters and incorrectly recast them as issues of academic freedom,” the statement says. “In the dismissal of Professors Butler and Weisgerber ... the university followed processes outlined in the Faculty Manual – processes proposed and approved by the Faculty Senate and approved by the university’s Board of Trustees.”

Weisgerber said her biggest dispute with the university has concerned its lack of accountability. “If you’re going to accuse me of something, you need to tell me what I did.”

She’s still seeking those answers, she said. But given the “he said, she said” nature of the dispute, she may not get those answers anytime soon.

Follow Cailin Crowe on Twitter at @cailincrowe, or email her at cailin.crowe@chronicle.com.