St. Mary's Reinstates 2 Fired Profs. After Pres. Calls for Cutting Low-Scoring Students: Drown Them Like Bunnies
A 208-year-old Roman Catholic academic institution in Maryland reinstated two professors fired for criticizing the school president's controversial plan to weed out lower-performing students.
Mount St. Mary's University, a picturesque Catholic higher educational institute located in Emmitsburg, will bring back professors Ed Egan and Thane Naberhaus.
In an announcement made last Friday, MSMU President Simon Newman stated at a meeting that the reinstatement of the two professors will be immediate.
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"We will work to implement the initiatives we agree are important for our students' future and our university's future," stated Newman.
"And most importantly eliminate the feelings of fear and injustice that any may be harboring, work through our misunderstandings, and make a new beginning as a unified team."
Newman garnered headlines when he wrote an email last month using inflammatory language to defend a student retention policy that involved ousting underperforming freshmen.
"This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can't. You just have to drown the bunnies ... put a Glock to their heads," he wrote in an email that was published by the campus paper.
Last week Newman had professors Egan and Naberhaus fired for their criticism of the proposed policy, prompting denunciations from many alumni and others connected to MSMU as well as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
Peter Bonilla, director of FIRE's Individual Rights Defense Program, sent a letter to Newman saying the two dismissals should be reversed in order to "lift the chill … cast over free expression."
"MSMU's unilateral actions against its faculty are profoundly troubling and raise fundamental concerns about its commitment to free expression and academic freedom," wrote Bonilla.
"These concerns are compounded by the lack of any discernible due process afforded to the
professors before they were terminated and physically removed from the MSMU campus."
Egan and Naberhaus' reinstatement comes as Newman continues to be embattled, as MSMU faculty voted 87 to 3 on Friday in favor of asking Newman to resign.
"Newman's tenure at the private 2,300-student university in Maryland was divisive before this firestorm. He was appointed in 2015, replacing a longtime president, and he proposed sweeping changes to the school," reported Susan Svrluga of The Washington Post.
"Those ideas struck some as necessary, modern and important, and others as a fundamental blow to the heart of its long-held Catholic, nurturing, liberal-arts identity."
