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Daniel Pollack-Pelzner
The case of Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, a noted Shakespearean scholar and, until recently, the Ronni Lacroute Chair in Shakespeare Studies at Linfield University, has quickly drawn attention to how a university administration and its Board of Trustees can feel entitled to bypass due process and substitute for it corporate protocols that even as such seem ethically problematic. Pollack-Pelzner, who has been a sharp critic of Linfield’s responses to sexual harassment and who has raised serious charges of anti-Semitism, has been fired for being “insubordinate.”
As reported in
The Oregonian, Pollack-Pelzner is known as being “a public advocate for students and faculty who had complained about alleged sexual abuse by board trustees.” He has also publicly reported instances of anti-Semitic statements by Linfield president Miles Davis.
The Petty Tyrants of Linfield University
Linfield University, a liberal arts college in Oregon, claims repeatedly in its faculty handbook to honor academic freedom. It could hardly be clearer. “Academic freedom and freedom of inquiry are values to which Linfield University subscribes.”
But Linfield’s despotic administration has effectively renounced this statement in favor of a pithier one: “Snitches get stitches.”
The snitcher–or whistleblower–in this case is Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, who was until recently a tenured Shakespeare scholar and a voting faculty member on Linfield’s Board of Trustees. At issue is Pollack-Pelzner’s unwelcome insistence that this same board take more seriously the documented mishandling of a case of trustee sexual misconduct, as well as additional similar allegations.
More Support for Terminated Linfield Professor
By
Hundreds of professors from scores of institutions have already signed a petition in support of Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, whom Linfield University fired this week. Pollack-Pelzner, formerly a chaired professor in Shakespeare studies at Linfield, recently went public with allegations of anti-Semitism involving members of the Board of Trustees. Pollack-Pelzner, who is Jewish, said the hostile environment intensified after he, as the sole faculty trustee, pressed board members to do more about report of sexual misconduct in their ranks.
Linfield had previously investigated Pollack-Pelzner’s concerns, finding that no university policies were violated. Dissatisfied with how things had progressed internally, Pollack-Pelzner began discussing his experiences on social media and in news articles. After a faculty vote of no confidence in President Miles Davis and David Baca, board chair, and after Linfield cut off university Listservs t
Linfield University president defends firing of tenured professor, says he has no plans to resign
Updated May 01, 2021;
Posted Apr 30, 2021
President Miles K. Davis also Friday recalled that he had discussed physical characteristics of Jews and other Semitic peoples with professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, after he had previously denied to an independent investigator making any such comments. “I might have well said that from a physical characteristic perspective, you d be hard pressed to tell the difference amongst Semitic people. It wasn’t a racist thing about measuring Jewish noses. Photo courtesy of Linfield
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Linfield University President Miles K. Davis on Friday rebuffed calls to resign and defended this week’s abrupt firing of an English professor who criticized him.