President Dennis Assanis shares an optimistic outlook for spring
At the University of Delaware, spring semester signals a fresh start, a time for new books, new brainstorms, new hope. As a year of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic rounds a corner, this has proven especially true. The campus community is feeling buoyed by the promise of a healthier forecast for 2021.
âWe are certainly much more hopeful for the future,â UD President Dennis Assanis said during the first Faculty Senate meeting of the new year, held Monday, Feb. 8. âIn spite of everything going on around us and the prevalence of the pandemic, there truly is a number of things giving us a source of optimism.â
February 11, 2021
In early 2019, DePaul professors Valerie Johnson and Quinetta Shelby began questioning the language and purpose of a clause in the universityâs Faculty Handbook that states âa pattern of extreme intimidation and aggression towards other members of the university committeeâ can be grounds for faculty dismissal or other repercussions.Â
The language, they argued to a faculty committee recently, provides no objective criteria for violation, leaving it ripe for abuse â particularly toward faculty of color, who are often accused of being threatening or aggressive if they are outspoken.
âIt feels like a veiled threat toward faculty of colorâ if we perceive you as aggressive, then you may stand to lose your job,â Johnson told The DePaulia, as the perception of both intimidation and aggression is widely subjective.Â
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John Eastman, left, and Rudy Giuliani speak at the Jan. 6 pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C.
Chapman University and John Eastman, a professor and former dean of the law school, have agreed that Eastman will resign, effective immediately.
The announcement came one week after Chapman, the Henry Salvatori Professor of Law and Community Service, spoke at the Jan. 6 “Save America” rally in Washington, D.C. and after students and colleagues accused him of helping incite the riot at the Capitol that followed.
At the rally, Eastman appeared onstage next to Rudy Giuliani, saying, “We know there was fraud” and “dead people voted” in the 2020 presidential election. Voting machines contained a “secret folder” of ballots, challenging the “very essence of our republican form of government,” he said.
A law professor and attorney for President
Donald Trump who repeatedly said the 2020 election was rigged and spoke at the rally that immediately preceded last week’s riots at the U.S. Capitol baselessly blamed the violent insurrection on “Antifa” on Wednesday.
Chapman University law professor
John Eastman, who last year spawned the birther theory that
Kamala Harris was constitutionally prohibited from serving as vice president, was the target of backlash after appearing with
Rudy Giuliani at Trump’s Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” protest. There, Eastman said President-elect
Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate.
“They were unloading the ballots from that secret folder, matching them, matching them to the unvoted voter, and voilà, we have enough votes to barely get over the finish line,” Eastman told the rallygoers. “We saw it happen in real time last night and it happened on Nov. 3 as well,” he added, referring first to the Jan. 5 Senate runoff elections,