Newsgroups: alt.censorship
From: ak200114@sol.yorku.ca
Subject: Professor Ousted..Gets Job Back (from the NYT)
Message-ID: <1994Sep17.210939.1@sol.yorku.ca>
Lines: 92
Sender: news@newshub.ccs.yorku.ca (USENET News System)
Organization: York University
Date: Sun, 18 Sep 1994 02:09:39 GMT

Professor Ousted for Lecture Gets Job Back

by William H.Honan (The New York Times, 
                    Saturday, September 17, 1994)

A Federal judge found yesterday that the University 
of New Hampshire acted wrongly when it suspended a 
professor for sexual harassment after seven female
students complained about comments he had made
during a writing class.

The judge, Shane Devine of Federal District Court in
Concord, N.H., ordered the university to reinstate
the professor, J.Donald Silva, who hs not been
allowed to teach there for two years.

The case of Professor Silva had been widely discussed
because his academic freedom was pitted against a 
university's rules on sexual harassment.  Codes to limit
offensive speech have been drafted at many educational
institutions around the country in recent years, and 
many of those codes have been challenged, as in the 
Silva case, on First Amendment grounds.  The results from
the courts have been mixed.

The Silva case centered on two comments by the professor,
who is also a longtime pastor at a New Hampshire church,
during a class on technical writing.  One was: "Focus
is like sex.  You seek a target.  You zero in on your
subject.  You bracket the subject and center on it.  Focus
connects experience and language.  You and the subject 
become one."

Later in the lecture, when discussing similes, Professor 
Silva paraphrased the way the belly dancer Little Egypt
had once defined her vocation.  "Belly dancing," the
professor said, "is like Jell-O on a plate with a vibrator
under the plate."

In his ruling yesterday, Judge Devine found "legitimate
pedagogical reasons" for the professor's choice of
language and said the university had violated his
constitutional right to free speech by punishing him for
exercising that right.

Judge Devine, nominated to the Federal bench by President
Jimmy Carter in 1978, granted Professor Ailva an injunction
ordering his reinstatement.  The decision has no bearing on
the back pay or the damages that the professor also seeks
from the university, and so the case will proceed to trial
if the parties do not settle.

"I'll be tickled pink to go back to teaching," said Professor
 Silva, a 59-year-old tenured professor of English and
writing at the Thompson School of Applied Science at the
university, in Durham.

His lawyer, Paul McEachern, said: "What's important about
the ruling is that by sending my client back to school, the
judge has ruled it's likely that Professor Silva will 
prevail when it comes to a hearing.  Also, the judge ruled
decisively on the First Amendment question.

Wilbur A. Glahn 3d., a lawyer for the university, said
that he was considering whether to appeal the ruling but
that Provessor Silva would be reinstated pending the 
outcome of any appeal.

Professor Silva's problems began two years ago, soon 
after he made the classroom comments in question.  When
seven women in the class compained, he was suspended with
pay.

Then, last year, a student-led university tribunal found
that the comments had indeed violated the university's
policy on verbal sexual harassment, and hs pay was cut
off as the suspension continued.  He was ordered to
apologize to the students and to undertake university-
approved-counseling.

Instead, last October, he filed suit, seeking not only
reinstatement but also $42,000 in back pay and damages
for an unspecified sum.  

Asked after yesterday's decision whether his experience
would prompt him to speak guardedly in the future,
Professor Silva said: "A writing class should be a place
where all sorts of language can be used.  I stood tall
for academic freedom and the First Amendment, and I intend
to coninue."

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