perm filename DINNAN.NS[1,JMC] blob sn#534894 filedate 1980-09-13 generic text, type T, neo UTF8
n022  0951  13 Sep 80
 
BC-TENURE 2takes
By EDWARD B. FISKE
c. 1980 N.Y. Times News Service
    ATHENS, Ga. - A professor has gone to jail, wearing his ceremonial
robes to symbolize his assertion that academic freedom is at stake,
for refusing to provide evidence in a sex discrimination suit against
the University of Georgia. The conflict between judicial rules and
faculty tradition has contributed to rising alarm over court and
federal intervention on campuses.
    James A. Dinnan, a 50-year-old education professor, was ordered by
U.S. District Judge Wilbur D. Owens to tell Maija Blaubergs, 33, an
assistant professor, how he voted as a member of a faculty committee
that denied her tenure. Dinnan declined, asserting that secrecy in
such decisions was essential to academic freedom. As a result of his
stand, he is serving a three-month sentence for contempt of court at
Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
    ''If academic freedom is not the right to judge one's peers free
from outside pressure or intimidation, then what is it?'' he asked in
a telephone interview from the minimum-security prison. ''I'm
fighting for the integrity of the system.''
    On the other hand, established judicial rules give Miss Blaubergs,
and anyone else involved in litigation, broad powers to gather, or
''discover,'' information to build a case. ''If courts can't enforce
these rights, then they cease to exist,'' said Andrew H. Marshall,
Miss Blaubergs's attorney.
    The case has aroused considerable anxiety in higher education
circles, in part because it is another sign of the growing
willingness of courts and federal officials to involve themselves in
matters of academic decision-making that were once considered beyond
judges' expertise. Last February, for example, a federal appellate
court awarded tenure to a physical education professor at Muhlenberg
College in Allentown, Pa., and early this month Ray Marshall, the
secretary of labor, ordered the University of California at Berkeley
to give his staff members unlimited access to hiring and promotion
documents.
    In addition, more women and members of minority groups have been
hired for faculty jobs under of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of
1964, which forbids employment discrimination on the basis of race,
sex or religion. The law's scope was extended in 1972 to include
colleges and universities. These teachers are now completing the six
or seven years of service that normally precede a tenure decision,
making more such cases likely.
    ''It's only now that significant numbers of women and minority
faculty members are coming up for tenure,'' said Claire Guthrie,
assistant general counsel to the American Council on Education, the
principal national umbrella group for colleges and universities.
    ''We're concerned with the precedent in this case,'' she
added.''We're concerned that the judge failed to recognize the
academic principles involved and achieve some sort of balance with
the rights of discovery.''
    She suggested that the tight job market in college teaching was
another factor that brought this conflict before the courts at this
time. ''In the past a person who was denied tenure would make a
professional decision to go quietly off to a job at a lesser
institution,'' she said. ''Now those jobs aren't there to go to.''
    The dispute began to develop last fall when a nine-member committee
of faculty members from the department of educational psychology
voted, 6 to 3, to deny tenure to Miss Blaubergs, a psycho-linguist
who had been teaching in the university's School of Education since
1972. Virginia Trotter, a former assistant secretary of health,
education and welfare who is vice president for academic affairs,
said in an interview that the decision was based on an assessment
that Miss Blaubergs had not ''done enough high-quality research.''
    Miss Blaubergs, who was denied promotion on two previous occasions,
filed suit against the university, contending that the real reasons
for the denial of tenure were her sex and her activities as
administrator of the university's small women's studies program. She
is trying to make the suit, which is being financed by the National
Education Association, a class-action suit.
    The plaintiff sought depositions from six members of the committee,
presumably the six who had voted against her, and all but Dinnan
cooperated. He said that he was willing to discuss any subject except
his vote. ''When it came to how in my conscience I voted, that is my
business,'' he said in the interview.
    Last June Owens found Dinnan to be in contempt of court and ordered
him to begin paying a $100 fine daily for 30 days unless he changed
his mind. The judge also threatened imprisonment if Dinnan continued
to defy the court, and on July 3, dressed in his academic robes to
show that ''in effect, the federal government will be locking up the
University of Georgia,'' the professor surrendered to federal
marshals.
    The sentence will be up Oct. 3, after which, if he continues to
refuse to speak, he could be returned to prison for up to 18 months.
(MORE)
    
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