Regent’s e-mail draws wrath of CCSN profs

Monday, Feb. 16, 2004 | 11:24 a.m.

University Regent Doug Hill of Reno drew the ire of some community college professors on Friday by sending out a mass e-mail through the president's office defending the Board of Regents' November decision to look into the tenure of removed lobbyist John Cummings.

Hill's two-page e-mail does not specifically mention Cummings or removed president Ron Remington, but it does respond to an exchange of e-mails from anonymous faculty members who claimed the regents were attacking academic freedom and the tenure system.

Hill's e-mail asserts that tenure is designed to "protect academics from retribution for expression of unpopular or controversial ideas, both inside and outside of the classroom."

"From my perspective as a regent, I find it most curious to lay the activities of academics who have been dismissed for expressing unpopular opinions (anti-slavery, atheism, etc.) alongside the most recent activities of CCSN employees," Hill wrote. "Those activities included, among other things, violation of contract policies, personnel and hiring policies, political favoritism, end runs around the regents' and the chancellor's directives, and $200 bottles of wine at taxpayer expense. It is difficult for me to conclude that regent actions concerning the above-listed items constitute an attack on tenure or academic freedom."

Cummings said he stood little chance of getting his lobbyist position back after reading Hill's letter and the faculty responses.

"I have been tried, in a perverted Chapter 6 hearing, on the all e-mail," Cummings said. "Where is a jury of my peers, unbiased, going to be found? And even if that were possible, what president is going to go against a regent who has been successful in getting rid of two top administrators?

"I still do not have a copy of any charges against me," Cummings continued. "I have been ruined professionally. My family has been held up to ridicule. And Hill makes it clear he will ruin me again."

The "everyone" e-mail at the Community College of Southern Nevada has been flooded with heated exchanges both for and against the removal Remington and Cummings since university regents ousted the pair from their posts in November.

At the heart of debate is not whether Remington or Cummings deserved to be reassigned, but whether the regents followed due process in removing the two and whether regents have a right to order an investigation into a professor's tenure.

The actual motion regents approved at the Nov. 20 meeting was to direct the interim president or the chancellor to reassign Cummings back to the classroom and to assign an independent investigator to determine whether a cause for dismissal exists. A committee of Cummings' peers would then have to vote to remove his tenure.

Hill said he wrote the letter as an explanation to faculty members, adding that he himself is undecided on whether Cummings' tenure should be removed.

"There were some serious questions raised about that (in the Nov. 17 and Nov. 20 special session)," Hill said from his home Sunday afternoon.

In the e-mails, many professors have expressed fear that the removal of one person's tenure by a Board of Regents complaint could lead to the removal of others.

History professor Michael Green blasted Hill in a response e-mail to all faculty, saying it was asinine for Hill to question the "moral turpitude" of Remington and Cummings when Hill formerly defended former CCSN president Richard Moore's questionable actions.

"Mr. Hill considers those of us who have questioned the lack of due process in this case either unaware or hypocritical--it is unclear which, possibly both," Green writes. "Clearly, he has chosen not to look in the mirror."

Regent Steve Sisolak said he had received several angry phone calls from community college professors Friday about Hill's e-mail, which Sisolak said "sets a bad precedent."

CCSN Spokeswoman Helen Clougherty, who confirmed the e-mail was sent to all faculty through the president's secretary, said such e-mails are rare, but not unheard of.