AAUP Asks Mizzou to Lift Suspension of Melissa Click

The American Association of University Professors has called on the University of Missouri to lift its suspension of Melissa A. Click, the assistant professor who drew scorn for her videotaped attempt to remove a student journalist from the site of a campus protest.

Ms. Click, who was charged last week with assault but reached a deal to avoid prosecution, is serving a suspension while the system’s Board of Curators investigates.

In a letter to the Columbia campus’s interim chancellor, Henry C. (Hank) Foley, the association’s associate secretary, Hans Joerg-Tiede, said the suspension violated due process. “It seems clear,” Mr. Joerg-Tiede wrote, “that, in not affording her a hearing prior to placing her under suspension, she has been denied the safeguards of academic due process.”