The University people have been claiming that what was in the newspapers was merely the tip of the iceberg, and if University policy allowed them to disclose the real problems with Professor Gerard, they would be vindicated. I was skeptical. My skepticism seems justified. What the University would not disclose, Professor Gerard has. And these documents simply confirm the newspaper accounts. There are no additional charges or revelations we haven't heard about. We could look at the transcript hearings too, I suppose, and Professor Gerard is willing to send them to me if I help her out with the massive xeroxing costs, but that isn't necessary. The documents I have just posted are summaries of about 10 pages each of (a) the initial Administration charges and evidence, and (b) the charges and evidence that survived the committee vote that stripped her of tenure.

The documents do add to our picture, naturally. Here is what I note from the charges:

1. It was not clear before, but there is an academic freedom issue here of the classic sort--- a professor's creative activity being constrained by what administrators want. Professor Gerard did theatre productions, and she didn't like interference from Mr. Womack, Division Head of Arts and Humanities. Whether she was right or wrong is not clear. Unlike writing a journal article, doing theatre productions involves more than just one professor, and so academic freedom gets complicated.

2. A number of other university employees disliked Professor Gerard's criticisms so much that they didn't want to work on theatre productions with her. One solution would have been to take her up on her threat to stop doing productions and just teach courses instead, but the University didn't want to do that.

In fact, one of the charges against her was that her threat to *not* work in theatre productions was failure to perform her duties, though the University was quite willing to let various other people not work in productions just because they disliked Gerard.

3. Various emails are quoted in which Professor Gerard says that other people are incompetent in dance, light-hanging, and so forth. No evidence is given that she was wrong about their incompetence-- the charge is simply that she shouldn't say it.

4. We learn that Professor Caram "was forced to cease using his Penn State email account because he could no longer tolerate her lengthy attacks about his alleged lack of professionalism and his failure to demonstrate the proper respect for her". This is weird. Was he terrified of seeing her name on an email return address?

I can't figure out what is going on, because apparently Professor Caram was hired in 1989, got tenure around 2000, and took early retirement in 2002 (citing Professor Gerard as the reason for leaving).

A. The committee lauds Professor Gerard as an "excellent teacher", popular with her students. She is also "a very creative and talented threatre director and actress". It is striking how she seems to have no problems in personal relations with students, but she does have big problems with others on the faculty and in the administration.

B. She "has consistently engaged in good service to the community, particularly in regard to her theatre activities in the Pittsburgh and Altoona areas". If she is so unreasonable in theatre productions, how can she get those gigs? The implication, it seems to me, is that she does fine with competent co-workers, but does not suffer fools gladly.

C. She received good annual reviews and raises through the April 5, 2001, review. If she has such a difficult temperament, why did the University like her up till then? That was when the new Integrative Arts Degree started, which she opposed so vigorously. As the report puts it, at that time her "role at the University changed...". It seems she was asked to do something different from what she had been doing up till then.

It is standard that a university can fire somebody if their job is no longer needed (e.g., you can fire all the sociology professors if the sociology department is eliminated). I don't think a university can fire someone because they want to add new duties to their old ones, though, and the university doesn't think the person is any good at the new duty.

D. The report seems to use the idea of the "heckler's veto" -- that if person X says something and person Y is offended and his behavior changes for the worse, then X is in the wrong. Here, Professor Gerard delivered strong criticism, and other professors didn't want to work with her.

The report cites a 1994 Supreme Court decision which held that a public employee's speech was unprotected and a basis for discharge if " it was in the form of criticism of a fellow employee and where the comments were of such a nature as to substantially dampen the fellow employee's interest in working in a particular department". That truly is a formula for mediocrity. It goes well beyond Nona Gerard, and would, for example, fire a professor who wrote a scathing review of a colleague's book, or even one who brought to light the plagiarism of a colleague.

E. Like the Charges, the Report gives no evidence indicating that Professor Gerard's crticisms were inaccurate in the slightest. The picture I am left with is of a department of thin-skinned incompetents, or perhaps of a reorganization which forced existing faculty to work with people just not in their league.

[in full at 04.03.28a.htm ]

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