Back in February, we reported on a little problem in the philosophy department at CU Boulder. Now it looks as though the school has bigger fish to fry.

Colleen Flaherty of Inside Higher Ed reports.

Fears of Litigation vs. Faculty Rights

A report on sexism in the department of philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder shocked many in and outside of the discipline upon its release earlier this year. Although allegations of sexism within philosophy are not uncommon, the American Philosophical Association Report — which was to remain confidential – described the Boulder department as one with “unacceptable sexual harassment, inappropriate sexualized professional behavior, divisive uncivil behavior.”

Upon making the report public, Boulder’s administration announced it was overhauling the department’s culture, starting with changing chairs and mandating anti-sexual-harassment training for all faculty members.

But a new report from the American Association of University Professors’ Colorado Conference and University of Colorado Chapter casts the university, not just the department, in a questionable light, accusing administrators of violating faculty members’ academic freedom and principles of shared governance, and of being more motivated by fear of litigation than by ethics in its response to the inquiry.

The chapter and conference “condemn several recent attacks upon the academic freedom, shared governance, and due process rights of faculty by CU-Boulder Arts and Sciences Dean Steven Leigh and Provost Russell Moore,” the report says. It alleges that the administrators “threatened to dissolve the philosophy department – a threat that silenced faculty criticism on an issue of institutional importance,” and that they chose to release the sexism report despite assurances to the faculty that it would remain confidential. Last, the AAUP report says, the administrators “have enforced an atmosphere of intolerance for faculty speech that they find distasteful or with which they disagree.”