This is interesting! Pat Cabe ------- Forwarded message follows ------- >From The Chronicle of Higher Education: Assigning Grades Is Not a First Amendment Right, Appeals Court Rules By JENNIFER JACOBSON A university can fire a professor for refusing to change a student's grade without violating the professor's First Amendment rights, a federal appeals court ruled in a case involving California University of Pennsylvania. Advocates for faculty members said the decision infringed on academic freedom by stripping professors of the right to assign students grades. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ordered a lower federal court to find for Angelo Armenti Jr., the university's president, in a lawsuit filed in 1996 by Robert A. Brown, a professor who teaches counseling classes. Mr. Brown, a tenured professor for 28 years, flunked a graduate student in 1994 for attending only three of 15 class sessions in a course. He charged that Mr. Armenti had ordered him to change the grade to "incomplete" and, when he refused, fired him in 1996. Nearly two years later, an arbitrator, dismissing Mr. Armenti's claims that he fired the professor for sexually harassing a student, ordered that Mr. Brown be reinstated. A civil-rights suit that Mr. Brown had filed proceeded nonetheless to federal district court, and that court rejected Mr. Armenti's attempt to have the case dismissed. The president appealed that decision to the Third Circuit. The appeals court ruled that Mr. Armenti did not violate Mr. Brown's right to academic free expression "because in the classroom, the university was the speaker and the professor was the agent of the university for First Amendment purposes." Mr. Brown, therefore, acted as the "university's proxy," the court wrote. "Because grading is pedagogic, the assignment of the grade is subsumed under the university's freedom to determine how a course is to be taught," the court said. "We therefore conclude that a public university professor does not have a First Amendment right to expression via the school's grade-assignment procedures." That ruling confounded officials at the American Association of University Professors. "The decision runs contrary to accepted academic practice and A.A.U.P. policy, where faculty members evaluate student course work and assign grades," said Donna Euben, counsel of the faculty association. She said the decision also conflicted with other court decisions that have recognized the right of professors to assign grades as part of their academic freedom. "Administrators are not in the classroom and not able to judge the quality of students' work," Ms. Euben said. "Professors are best able to judge work. Students want it that way." John M. Golden, a lawyer for Mr. Brown who is also an adjunct faculty member at the university, said he felt like he was "mourning the loss of academic freedom." The court, he said, ruled that "the president of a public university can force a professor to change his or her opinion," a decision he called "scary" and "egregious." Mr. Golden said his client, who is now on sick leave from the university but who will teach there next fall, would appeal the decision to the full Third Circuit. University officials released a statement saying that they were pleased with the ruling and that the institution denies Mr. Brown's allegations that he was pressured to change a student's grade. "If this case had ever gone to trial, the university defendants were prepared to prove that there was no order to change a grade," the statement said. Mr. Armenti declined to comment further on the ruling. -------------------------- End of forwarded message ------- Patrick Cabe, Ph.D. Department of Psychology University of North Carolina at Pembroke Pembroke, NC 28372-1510 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 910-521-6630 - Voice/voice-mail 910-521-6240 - Department 910-521-6518 - FAX
