Patterico's Pontifications

2/25/2016

Mizzou Fires Melissa Click

Filed under: General — JVW @ 2:43 pm



[guest post by JVW]

Details here. It would have been hard to envision any other outcome, much as my cynical side wanted to believe that the university would string this out long enough to have it fade from memory and then give her a slap on the wrist. There was no way in the aftermath of this that they could grant her tenure, and keeping her around as a lecturer or a permanent assistant professor weren’t viable options.

From the linked article:

In interviews with The Missourian, Faculty Council Chair and law professor Ben Trachtenberg called the decision to fire Click “terrible” and Faculty Council member Angela Speck said it was “ridiculous that she should be fired without due process.”

The law professor is entitled to his opinion, but notice how he makes no attempt to ground it in any sort of statutory requirement that the faculty has to protect a crybully who attempts to enforce her rancid ideology on others. As for Angela Speck, Professor of Astrophysics, she is apparently named for Angela Davis, so we should appreciate that she started life with the odds stacked against her. Further proof that ability in a STEM fields is no guarantee of logical insight into other academic disciplines.

I thought that Mizzou would wait until the start of their spring break (March 26) in order mitigate the chances of disruptive demonstrations by the Concerned Students 1950 crowd, but I guess they wanted to give Click the opportunity to ply her wares at some other institution of higher learning. Or perhaps they need this much time to find somebody to carry on her urgent research into Fifty Shades of Grey and other pop culture banalities.

UPDATE: Earlier stories on Melissa Click located here.

– JVW

36 Responses to “Mizzou Fires Melissa Click”

  1. Earlier stories on Melissa Click located here.

    JVW (aa050c)

  2. She got a damn sight more “due process” than your average male student does when he forgets to call the girl back the next day.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  3. Due process as a defense from an academic? Will miracles never cease?

    Otto Maddox (21cb29)

  4. There are so many many schools she could move to that would love to have her.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  5. Yeah, I didn’t mention it in the post, but Prof. Click had the opportunity to present her case to the board and had a petition on her behalf submitted by the faculty council. I’m not sure what aspect of “due process” she was supposedly denied. I guess to Prof. Speck “due process” is another way of saying “is allowed to get away with it.”

    JVW (aa050c)

  6. There are so many many schools she could move to that would love to have her.

    The Obama White House and the Hillary! campaign will no doubt be competing for her, uh, services such as they are.

    JVW (aa050c)

  7. Teh War on Demented Womyn!

    Colonel Haiku (d54e37)

  8. O.M.G. Biden apologizes to Mexico for anti-Mexican GOP rhetoric. WToo bad he didn’t asked Mexico to apologize for the Alamo. Same day, former Mexican President Fox cocked his sombrero and tells Trump Mexico won’t pay for a ‘f–king’ wall.

    “Badges? Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.”

    DCSCA (a343d5)

  9. You are a parent of high school student and you witness Prof.Click and her antics, the Admission
    office of the university has less campus requests for visits.The Bursar director has less money,
    the Dean is on notice.

    mike191 (4c004d)

  10. There are so many many schools she could move to that would love to have her.

    The Obama White House and the Hillary! campaign will no doubt be competing for her, uh, services such as they are.

    JVW (aa050c) — 2/25/2016 @ 3:13 pm

    Honestly? I think they’re going to avoid her. She has baggage that Sir Hillary does not need right now, and I genuinely can’t think of a position (except bend over and spread ’em)that would be of any use to the White House that ValJar hasn’t already covered in 7+ years.

    Bill H (dcdd7b)

  11. this is what happens to poopers

    happyfeet (8e2eaf)

  12. Honestly? I think they’re going to avoid her.

    Yeah, my tongue was planted firmly in cheek there. But I think Kevin M is absolutely that some other school will hire her. Probably not a major research university, though.

    Click’s husband or partner or whatever is a tenured professor in the religious studies department at Mizzou. I wonder what’s going through his mind right now. Would he dare leave that cushy sinecure in protest?

    JVW (aa050c)

  13. Oh my gosh! This is terrible! Do you mean to tell me that college professors can actually be fired? Won’t somebody please think of the children? How many of them will now be traumatized, not to mention triggered, by this act of patriarchical aggression on their campus? Is there no safe space?

    nk (dbc370)

  14. Oh, so Melissa does have someone to harangue at home. I was worried that she would be accosting strangers on street corners.

    nk (dbc370)

  15. Click twice got to testify before the Board of Curators and with her attorney present and as noted in the article, still has the right to appeal. Seems like a hell of a lot more due process than young men falsely accused of sexual assault get on campus, but then again, both her and Speck are liberal women so they aren’t too interested in equal treatment. To them equal treatment means more for them, less for you.

    Thresherman (c9d903)

  16. I look for Melissa to end up back in Massachusetts running for office.

    mg (31009b)

  17. As with Ward Churchill and Steven Salaita, her sins were a combination of:

    1) Attracting attention to her extreme left antics, AND

    2) Doing worthless “research” in a worthless department.

    The only way a university could justify to the public keeping these people on would be by pointing out the quality and importance of their research. But if they tried to do this, it would bring scrutiny to the departments and to the research, which is the last thing these universities want.

    I think that a mathematician or physicist or anyone doing real research who did this leftist garbage would be supported by the university. (Of course, a right-wing mathematician better watch his step.)

    LTEC (f3a329)

  18. Oh, so Melissa does have someone to harangue at home. I was worried that she would be accosting strangers on street corners.

    nk (dbc370) — 2/25/2016 @ 4:23 pm

    What makes you think she isn’t already?

    Bill H (dcdd7b)

  19. Yeah, my tongue was planted firmly in cheek there. But I think Kevin M is absolutely that some other school will hire her. Probably not a major research university, though.

    Sorry ’bout not catching that. For reasons I won’t go into here, today wasn’t a good day and I’m not thinking too clearly as a result.

    Bill H (dcdd7b)

  20. I think a lot of schools will want her. Thís is a badge of honor to many. She is now a cause in herself to rally around.

    Dana (86e864)

  21. No sweat, Bill H. Sorry to hear about the bad day. Hope tomorrow is more to your liking.

    JVW (9e3c77)

  22. I think a lot of schools will want her.

    I think most major research universities will avoid her because (1) she is controversial (obviously) and (2) her scholarship isn’t particularly impressive and she doesn’t check any boxes in the diversity scorecard. I see her teaching at a mid-level private university with a small endowment, or a community college in a large urban setting in a community dominated by Democrats.

    JVW (9e3c77)

  23. She got to be more trouble, and damaging to the school brand, than she was worth, and she did not have the constituency the football coach had. The right politics or not, her fellow leftie nebbishes were not going to stick their necks out for her at the risk of their own careers.

    What happened at Angela Davis High USCLA with Ben Shapiro, Dana?

    nk (dbc370)

  24. No severance pay either. Score one for the good guys.

    Pons Asinorum (49e2e8)

  25. No severance pay for leaving, but I think she has been on paid leave since that fateful November day, so she got pretty much three months worth of pay for doing nothing. In a sane world that money would have been put in an escrow account and it only would have been remitted had she been retained. But we’ll take what we can get.

    JVW (9e3c77)

  26. By the way Pons Asinorum, thanks for the link. I liked this part from that article:

    And when she was asked what evidence she found to be most favorable to Click during deliberations, [Chairman of the Board of Curators Pam] Henrickson responded:

    “I can’t say that I think there was much on Dr. Click’s behalf that was compelling.”

    That’s brutal. Yet Henrickson apparently voted against dismissing Click, which is hard to reconcile.

    JVW (9e3c77)

  27. Score one for the good guys.

    Pons Asinorum (49e2e8) — 2/25/2016 @ 9:10 pm

    Wow. They dropped the hammer on her. Well done.

    Bill H (dcdd7b)

  28. As for Angela Speck, Professor of Astrophysics, she is apparently named for Angela Davis,

    And Richard Speck?

    Nicholas Bretagna II (225d0d)

  29. Thanks for your post JVW.

    This lady’s politics is sickening, so I just put her out of mind. What a great thing that she got fired. So glad you posted it.

    Pons Asinorum (49e2e8)

  30. It makes a nice change anyway.

    Even in a political environment, someone actually said it’s not ok to threaten people. There is a little hope, maybe.

    scrubone (7ff6c2)

  31. There will be a lawsuit filed by the demented Click entity, which will be quietly settled at some time in the future with a large payout to the loon Click. Look for the settlement to be announced, if at all, late Friday afternoon during a week in which President Trump has declared war on Lithuania, or some such, so that it will get no press coverage.

    orcadrvr (41c165)

  32. So it says she can appeal the termination, so she is probably technically still employed there, and I would be surprised if her termination took effect earlier than the end of the academic year.

    It’s very hard to fire faculty, they have to do something pretty extreme.

    Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1)

  33. @ #32
    actually it isn’t hard when the person doesn’t have tenure. She was declined for tenure.

    Angelo (d4b40d)

  34. @Angelo:actually it isn’t hard when the person doesn’t have tenure. She was declined for tenure.

    When that happens there is typically a terminal appointment of a year. That’s not “termination” as anyone else outside academia uses the word, where you get to finish out this year and stay one more.

    Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1)

  35. so she got pretty much three months worth of pay for doing nothing

    So pretty much no change from what she was paid for prior to all this happening.

    Bill M (906260)


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