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Comment by sjsdaiuasgdia | Hacker News Reader

The nature of the firing, with security and police escorts and such, made me wonder what kind of history preceded this incident. A search for "scott gerber onu" turned up this summary [1] of a lawsuit filed by Mr. Gerber against ONU in 2017.

The gist appears to be that a colleague put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention and Mr. Gerber interpreted this as an assault. The court disagreed with his interpretation, as did the US 6th Circuit upon appeal.

The nature of the firing makes a lot more sense if this is an individual with a history of reacting to common workplace interactions with legal action.

I have a feeling his overall claim of being fired solely because of his opinions about diversity is about as valid as his claims of being assaulted.

[1] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-6th-circuit/1871365.htm...

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What a great link you’ve posted — a fascinating read indeed.

A law professor who took his boss to court, filing a 200 page complaint after waiting until the last possible day for filing, which included a seven year history of gripes leading up to the physical altercation that went to trial… a law professor who lifts and plays golf who also got a dodgy post-hoc diagnosis a year after the event that it was the altercation tore his shoulder and not his lifestyle choices… a law professor who went through four attorneys before finally deciding to represent himself in court…

You’d perhaps think I was creating hyperbole from the linked judgment but the judgement from the appeal court — especially the tone in which it is written — is no less damning than the facts I just picked out from the first few sections.

It’s appalling that the WSJ published this professor’s blog entry as editorial commentary.

The Wall Street Journal's Editorial page is notoriously reactionary, this is par for the course to be honest.

This is always the problem with "my employer did something bad to me"-kind of stories. The employer can and will not defend themselves for legal and privacy reasons, so all we're left with is ... one side of the story. Sometimes these stories are correct, sometimes not, but we have no way of knowing.

In high school my brother was frequently suspended yet he never did anything wrong, according to him. I attended the same school and also never did anything wrong, yet was never suspended. Odd that.

The thing that stands out the most in that lawsuit:

"Plaintiff's amended complaint and its attachments “exceed[ed] 200 pages and collect[ed] more than seven years' worth of workplace grievances. Gerber claims he has been bullied, lied to, retaliated against, and wrongly denied more than one hundred thousand dollars in retirement benefits” in violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act."

If I were to write down everything I remember from my 20 years of professional life – positive, negative, anything! – then I'd struggle to reach 200 pages.

Possibly, but the fact that they are refusing to tell him why he's being removed makes this suspicious. Seems like they would not need to hide it if the reason was "you're being removed due to excessive litigation against the school and your peers". They would have a reason to hide "you're being removed because you disagree with us".

This is all just speculation of course.

We only really have his word for that. We have him saying that he was told that if he didn't resign, dismissal proceedings would start. We have him saying that the only reason he was given for starting a dismissal proceeding was "collegiality".

His past behavior is likely causing the administration to be very, very cautious about what is said by who and where because anything touching this individual will likely result in legal action.

We have his lawyers' word for it as well: https://www.thefire.org/news/professor-suspended-reasons-unk...

The university is also refusing to tell them the nature of their "investigation."

(The non-profit organization FIRE and the legal firms involved here are extremely reputable. If the university is afraid of being sued, their apparent aversion to anything resembling due process would seem to be having the opposite effect.)

> The university is also refusing to tell them the nature of their “investigation.”

Since he hasn’t contested that the refusal to participate itself was a termination-eligible offense per the staff handbook, and since he hasn’t offered any indication of anything in the staff handbook or other material that would form part of the employment contract that entitled him to know about the subject of the investigation, I don’t see how that’s material. He has not disputed that he committed an offense that is in black and white an offense justifying termination, and seems mostly to be (even if you accept his explanation in its entirety as to the facts known to him) speculating only on the context of that offense, and then suggesting that that speculative context is the real motive for firing him, not the uncontested firing-worthy offense.

Yeah, yeah, it sucks for everyone (well, everyone in private employment, without a better contract that Gerber apparently had) in this country that private employment doesn’t come with the same type of due process rights that having adverse consequences imposed by the State has. But Gerber’s a law prof, so presumably he knew that already, and, anyway, he’s not making a complaint about the legal structure of private employment relations, so, I’m really not sure what the point is beyond an argument that he is entitled to special treatment outside of the contract even though there is no general entitlement to such treatment.

If Gerber is being fired as retaliation for reporting a sexual assault the school would 100% need to hide that.

> but the fact that they are refusing to tell him why he's being removed makes this suspicious

FWIW this sounds normal to me. Many lawyers consider standard operating procedure with litigious individuals to be: "Give them as few specifics as possible".

Sounds reasonable, as I said, it was just speculation.

> Possibly, but the fact that they are refusing to tell him why he’s being removed makes this suspicious.

Besides his claim, what basis do you have for describing this as a “fact”?

> Seems like they would not need to hide it if the reason was “you’re being removed due to excessive litigation against the school and your peers”. They would have a reason to hide “you’re being removed because you disagree with us”.

Seems like if he was going to misrepresent the reason he was being fired, misrepresenting the information he was or was not given by the people firing him would very likely be part of that. (Of course, even his account has him being given notice previously of potential cause of adverse career consequences of specific actions.) He contends that he choose to refuse to participate in the investigation he was asked to because he did not have adequate information about its content, but he does not seem to dispute that such refusal is defined as insubordination in the staff handbook nor does he allege that there is anything in University policy that entitles him to more information than he had received prior to participating in an investigation. Private employment in the US generally doesn’t come with due process rights beyond those in the employment contract. You’d think a conservative law prof, even if they weren’t working in a private institution, would know that.

> Besides his claim, what basis do you have for describing this as a “fact”?

None other than the same info is repeated by a third party as another commenter noted: https://www.thefire.org/news/professor-suspended-reasons-unk...

Your other points may be valid, I was just speculating. There may be additional protections here other than the handbook since he seems to have tenure, which brings additional special protections (obligatory "I'm not a lawyer")

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