Alumni, parents, national group slam @LInfieldUniv's firing of professor who raised sex abuse, anti-Semitic allegations https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2021/04/alumni-parents-national-group-slam-linfields-firing-of-professor-who-raised-sex-abuse-anti-semitic-allegations.html

One parent of a Linfield graduate said she’s changing her will:’I will no longer be bequeathing any sum of money to Linfield University. Due to the recent firing and the attempt at silencing Professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner I cannot in good conscience leave money to Linfield.’

The chair of the English Department stepped aside from that role and from his seat on the university’s faculty leadership council, apparently in protest when the school had no plan for how to cover for Pollack-Pelzner’s classes and his students’ grades during finals week.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a national campus civil liberties org that defends the rights of students and faculty across the country, called Pollack-Pelzner’s termination “alarming” because the university did not allow a hearing or any due process.

“It was devastating. I was in shock. I felt unmoored that the school I devoted myself to for 11 years, that I tried to make safer and more welcoming would fire me without any explanation or process,” Daniel Pollack-Pezner said.

The professor learned he was fired when his laptop screen during a work-related Zoom meeting froze and shut down. He couldn’t access his @LinfieldUniv email. When he sent a personal email to his university email , he got this same message that he longer wked at the school.

Pollack-Pelzner’s firing immediately caused disarray on campus, leaving students in his two English courses in the lurch, not knowing where or how to turn in their final papers, many of which were due Tuesday.

Some students disturbed by the firing scrawled messages in chalk around campus & posted printed fliers that read: “ #NotMyLinfield An Extraordinary Step in the Wrong Direction.” ( a play on the provost’s email to staff announcing the firing, which read: “Extraordinary Step.”)

Lainie Sowell,Linfield’s area director for student success,sent email to student RAs telling them they couldn’t use their position or resources -ie, paper or crafting materials - to make signs or fliers to “advocate for what you believe in” because they’re student univ employees.

“Students hung up posters all over campus, and the resident advisers were ordered to go take them down,” said professor Rachel Norman, a creative writing instructor and a 2008 Linfield graduate. “The students are distraught,” she said. “I feel so morally and ethically outraged.”

Sowell, the university area director for student success, also reminded the student residence advisors that use of sidewalk chalk must be pre-approved and failure to remove chalk would result in a $25 a day fine.

One student sent me this video of campus staff washing down the chalk messages in support of DPP- students’ shorthand for fired English Prof. Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

By day’s end, the exec committee of @LinfieldUniv board of trustees issued statement, supporting Pollack-Pelzner’s firing. “During the past year, the Linfield community has been harmed by repeated false and divisive statements. It is time to move forward and focus on the future.”