Let’s take a closer look at this John Daly situation, and what the university may or may not do.
Daly has openly shown that he is, er, violently biased, and it is now up to the university to monitor him to make sure that his bias does not seep into the classroom, either in the grades he gives, or his course content.
That’s unlikely. University administrators and faculty are utterly uninterested in supervising faculty, and usually wait until students start filing complaints — and I say students, not a student, because so many student complaints are bogus that universities (understandably) view them skeptically.
Given that the college is highly unlikely to do anything to protect students from this jerk, termination seems to be the only recourse. But that’s not as simple as most believe.
It seems that in New Jersey (unlike, say, Indiana), trustees are not only barking moonbat faculty, but members of the state board of ed. That stacks the deck even more heavily on Daly’s side.
Then there’s his status: Daly is part-time, not tenured. This may seem like he’d be easier for the university to deal with, but that isn’t necessarily the case. Probably the most heated issue on campuses today is the treatment of non-tenured faculty, and for good reason: universities across the nation have been hiring qualified people to teach courses tenured faculty are far too important to bother with, giving them course loads three or four times as heavy as tenured faculty, paying them nothing, and often giving them no benefits. It would not be politically wise for the college not to bend over backwards to appear as if they are being fair to Daly.
Note that I said the college needs to appear as if they are being fair. That doesn’t mean they will be. If there’s a big enough stink, they’ll let him go (hint, hint). When he becomes a political liability, all the “academic freedom” and “first amendment” talk will disappear.
It’s unfortunate that this is a community college, and not a major university. A university depends heavily on alumni contributions for funding, much more so than a community college, and a concentrated “fire him or no more money from me” effort from alumni would have a far greater impact at a major university.
Emailing President Austin and writing the trustees could eventually be productive. Writing the local papers and keeping this fire burning in the blogosphere, so the issue doesn’t go away, will most likely be even more productive.
