Sunday, August 20, 2006
More about Ave Maria
The WSJ post on Fumare had this interesting comment:
"And the stuff about forcing a professor to recant statements in order to have his contract renewed is just despicable. "
Thanks for the words of support, Joel.
I can at last say openly that I am the professor in question. And not just a professor: a departmant chairman and dean, as well.
The reality of the situation was much worse than Ms. Riley summarized in her article.
The fact is that I (and most of the other faculty) _had_ a contract, signed by AMC president Ron Muller in 2004, good until 2007. I should, in fact, still be employed there. But for reasons I do not understand, the AMC Board denied the validity of these contracts, even though every lawyer to whom I have shown these contracts has prounounced them valid. Instead, the AMC administration pursued a curious fiction of issuing faculty one year "contract renewal" letters, acting like we were only on year-to-year contracts. Each letter had a line in it noting that our Faculty Handbooks contained restrictions that we were not to "embarrass" the institution. I must admit to having found this language particularly galling: as one of the founding facutly of AMC, I had a hand in the creation of the Handbook in the first place, and that language was put in to the Handbook to deal with professors who fell into public heterodoxy, not to muzzle faculty who had legitimate complaints about how the institution was governed or mis-governed. If Original Intent matters, I can tell you what it was, since I was there, and was one of the framers.
And yes, I will admit that I am one of the people responsible for complaining to the IG wing of the Department of Education about the mismanagement of financial aid monies, and other matters, by the Ave Maria administration. And when it came down to "buy-out" deals for the final year of AMC (as though our 2004 Muller contracts weren't valid!), I can confirm that my and my wife's "contract" insisted that we surrender all legal claims against the institution, in return for the institution surrendering NO claims against us.
When we pressed for a mutual release of claims instead, we were told by AMC president Dan Guernsey that AMU president Nick Healy did not want to allow the institution to give a mutual release of claims, as he believed that it doing so might interfere with his ability to sue us for libel _personally_. His point of contention was over the 2004 complaint that we and others made to the IG wing of the Department of Education: we were told that he said that he had felt "hurt" by it, and that it might be damaging to him and his future earnings. Finally, I can confirm that as of last month, my wife and I were told that we could get some elements of a mutual release if we agreed to retract the statements we had made to the Department of Education, and indicate that we had no evidence of fraud or wrongdoing on the part of President Healy.
The sad thing, for us, anyway, is that most of the other AMC faculty we spoke to afterwards said that when they had asked for mutual releases of claims, they received them. As nearly as we can tell, only my wife and I were denied them, and we wonder if it is because we were whistleblowers. In any event, we were personally and professionally insulted by the retraction request. I am a historian, and it is my job to preserve the past, not bury it. My wife is a librarian, and it is her job to provide information, not supress it.
We may as well have been asked to deny who we were.
In the end we found ourselves in an untenable situation. We knew that we had the law on our side, and that we could win if we stuck it out. But we also knew that if we tried, the Ave Maria leadership would make our lives miserable in many petty ways. So, like many other people, we left Ave Maria, and, indeed, the state of Michigan, suddenly and without warning. We did this in part for our own and our family's protection. But we left with our souls intact, and with our freedoms--to speak, to litigate, or just to walk away--unimpaired. We are poorer, but we are free. And that is a reward above price.
And for anyone who is new to this controversy, some advice. From a guy who knows. I was the first faculty member hired by Ave Maria Institute, back in 1998. I was there before just about anyone else was. And I'm an ex-Department Chair and an ex-Dean.
The people you want to listen to? That would be folks like Charlie Rice, Andy Messaros, Jay McNally, Kate Ernsting, and anyone else on their side.
Christopher Beiting
"And the stuff about forcing a professor to recant statements in order to have his contract renewed is just despicable. "
Thanks for the words of support, Joel.
I can at last say openly that I am the professor in question. And not just a professor: a departmant chairman and dean, as well.
The reality of the situation was much worse than Ms. Riley summarized in her article.
The fact is that I (and most of the other faculty) _had_ a contract, signed by AMC president Ron Muller in 2004, good until 2007. I should, in fact, still be employed there. But for reasons I do not understand, the AMC Board denied the validity of these contracts, even though every lawyer to whom I have shown these contracts has prounounced them valid. Instead, the AMC administration pursued a curious fiction of issuing faculty one year "contract renewal" letters, acting like we were only on year-to-year contracts. Each letter had a line in it noting that our Faculty Handbooks contained restrictions that we were not to "embarrass" the institution. I must admit to having found this language particularly galling: as one of the founding facutly of AMC, I had a hand in the creation of the Handbook in the first place, and that language was put in to the Handbook to deal with professors who fell into public heterodoxy, not to muzzle faculty who had legitimate complaints about how the institution was governed or mis-governed. If Original Intent matters, I can tell you what it was, since I was there, and was one of the framers.
And yes, I will admit that I am one of the people responsible for complaining to the IG wing of the Department of Education about the mismanagement of financial aid monies, and other matters, by the Ave Maria administration. And when it came down to "buy-out" deals for the final year of AMC (as though our 2004 Muller contracts weren't valid!), I can confirm that my and my wife's "contract" insisted that we surrender all legal claims against the institution, in return for the institution surrendering NO claims against us.
When we pressed for a mutual release of claims instead, we were told by AMC president Dan Guernsey that AMU president Nick Healy did not want to allow the institution to give a mutual release of claims, as he believed that it doing so might interfere with his ability to sue us for libel _personally_. His point of contention was over the 2004 complaint that we and others made to the IG wing of the Department of Education: we were told that he said that he had felt "hurt" by it, and that it might be damaging to him and his future earnings. Finally, I can confirm that as of last month, my wife and I were told that we could get some elements of a mutual release if we agreed to retract the statements we had made to the Department of Education, and indicate that we had no evidence of fraud or wrongdoing on the part of President Healy.
The sad thing, for us, anyway, is that most of the other AMC faculty we spoke to afterwards said that when they had asked for mutual releases of claims, they received them. As nearly as we can tell, only my wife and I were denied them, and we wonder if it is because we were whistleblowers. In any event, we were personally and professionally insulted by the retraction request. I am a historian, and it is my job to preserve the past, not bury it. My wife is a librarian, and it is her job to provide information, not supress it.
We may as well have been asked to deny who we were.
In the end we found ourselves in an untenable situation. We knew that we had the law on our side, and that we could win if we stuck it out. But we also knew that if we tried, the Ave Maria leadership would make our lives miserable in many petty ways. So, like many other people, we left Ave Maria, and, indeed, the state of Michigan, suddenly and without warning. We did this in part for our own and our family's protection. But we left with our souls intact, and with our freedoms--to speak, to litigate, or just to walk away--unimpaired. We are poorer, but we are free. And that is a reward above price.
And for anyone who is new to this controversy, some advice. From a guy who knows. I was the first faculty member hired by Ave Maria Institute, back in 1998. I was there before just about anyone else was. And I'm an ex-Department Chair and an ex-Dean.
The people you want to listen to? That would be folks like Charlie Rice, Andy Messaros, Jay McNally, Kate Ernsting, and anyone else on their side.
Christopher Beiting
Labels: AMSOL
