ISU professor emeritus fired after opinion piece

POCATELLO (AP) - A professor emeritus at Idaho State University claims he was fired Thursday from his part-time job in the campus library after writing an opinion piece that was satirically critical of school president Arthur Vailas.

Leonard Hitchcock worked as an unpaid volunteer for five years before he went on the university library payroll in January, earning $11 an hour as acting head of special collections. He believes his termination was retribution, he said.

"It strikes me this is a political reaction by the administration," Hitchcock told the Idaho State Journal.

Hitchcock said he was told he was being fired by librarian Jenny Lynne Semenza, who was acting under orders of the university's interim provost Barbara Adamcik, he said. The provost declined to comment, university spokesman Mark Levine said.

"We do not comment on personnel issues," Levine said.

A column by Hitchcock was published Sunday in the Idaho State Journal. It referred to Vailas as "King Arthur" and was critical of his handling of a lengthy dispute with faculty over shared governance on the Pocatello campus.

The state Board of Education voted last year to dissolve the university's previous Faculty Senate, which been at loggerheads with Vailas. The university then elected new, temporary faculty leaders to work with Vailas to adopt a new constitution.

The provisional Faculty Senate was due to sunset in April, or upon the completion of constitution. But the two sides appeared far from a consensus in February, when faculty reported they had again reached an impasse.

Vailas recommended work on the constitution continue with a new, permanent Faculty Senate.

The board agreed, effectively dissolving the provisional faculty leadership panel.

In an April 29 newspaper editorial, Hitchcock wrote "When there is seditious talk of political rights and faculty governance, the king must adopt a stern aloofness and wield his authority without hesitation."

Hitchcock retired in 2006. He had been a full-time professor at the university for 21 years as a humanities bibliographer and head of the collections division at the library. He was granted professor emeritus status in 2006, the year Vailas was hired.

Hitchcock said he hopes to continue working in the library as a volunteer. He is not the first university employee to claim he was fired for publicly voicing his discontent with the Vailas administration.

Professor Habib Sadid was suspended from the university in August 2009 and terminated a month later for what administrators called unprofessional and insubordinate conduct. But Sadid said his history of speaking out about campus problems led to his termination.

Sadid sued the university in state court in 2008 while he was still employed at the school, but the case was dismissed. The Idaho Supreme Court upheld the dismissal in December, rejecting claims Sadid was the victim of retaliation.

Information from: Idaho State Journal, http://www.journalnet.com