Across more than three decades of teaching literature, engineering communications, and intentional self-development, I’ve worked to continually improve the ways I work with students to support their learning and growth. While the methodologies evolved over time, my standards of practice for creating and preserving an atmosphere of respect and professionalism while also allowing for meaningful, and therefore sometimes personal, conversations have never changed. This approach yielded many productive and mutually empowering teacher-student relationships, as well as continuing working relationships and some lifelong friendships. A few years ago, however, university culture began changing quickly. The academic style that had produced exemplary results for so many years was now seen by some as potentially toxic and became cancel culture ammunition.
In the Fall of 2019, a former student employee decided that a conversation we had at an off-campus coffee house one day made her uncomfortable, so she filed a Title IX complaint. This is her right, as it should be. However, the administration of the Title IX office decided (as they had for previous complaints against faculty) to rubber stamp the complaint, disregard due process, and disallow the many student voices that came to my support.
Nationwide, Title IX is a necessary and fundamentally well-crafted doctrine that, unfortunately, has been twisted and tattered by an influential minority of administrators who have abused their power and held faculty responsible based on almost any circumstances and without due process. I'm just one of hundreds of faculty whose careers have been irreversibly damaged by an overreaching “woke ideology” culture that empowers those who seek to punish, rather than to listen, and allows conjecture to be regarded as fact. As a result, the ability of faculty to positively impact students’ lives is being severely compromised and the true educational mission of the university diminished.
While it may have been easier to continue my career, I could not compromise my values, and felt I could no longer teach effectively under the more restrictive (and stifling) conditions that now characterize academic culture. So, I walked away and filed a $1.35 million dollar lawsuit against the institution and individuals who have continually denied my rights and the rights of my colleagues.
Mine is one of more than 800 currently active cases against Title IX in the U.S.* These are faculty, staff, and students fighting back against a broken Title IX system.
*For more information, go to Title IX for All: https://titleixforall.com/