The administration’s refusal to address the suspension of mathematics chair David Massey has been “enormously damaging” to the department and the university, one professor said, and has led some department members to question university procedures for handling complaints against faculty.
Math professor Thomas Sherman is one of several Faculty Senate members who called for a sub-committee, later created by the Senate Agenda Committee, to review and potentially redefine how and by whom complaints against faculty are handled. He said that while the committee is not reviewing the allegations against Massey or his case, the need for such a committee was sparked by his suspension.
“It becomes quite clear that the process has no safeguard beyond the good word of the people who carried it out,” Sherman said. “We simply do not have a way to reassure ourselves, other than to give these people the benefit of the doubt, that what was done, was done properly and really merited the extreme damaging measure that it took.”
Several math staff and faculty members painted the scene of a frustrated, confused and demoralized math department plagued by rumor and speculation when asked how members have reacted to Massey’s suspension. Except for one meeting with Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Jim Stellar and then Provost Ahmed Abdelal, during which the administrators said they supported the math department but could not talk about the case, staff and faculty members say the administration failed to contact the department about the case and notify them of the suspension.
Robert McOwen, a mathematics professor and former department chair, will serve as interim chair until a new chair is found.
“There is strong support for Dave. He was very popular, very effective and we kind of feel like he was removed without any input from us,” McOwen said. “We don’t feel like we have a good understanding of why such severe action was taken. They don’t reveal the details of the case, which may be necessary for confidentiality, but it puts us in the position that we may have to accept or reject the outcome without understanding it.
“I feel and the whole department feels that he may have been treated unfairly.”
The department’s upheaval comes during a time of increasing discontent among faculty concerning shared governance with the administration. In a Sept. 17 issue of The News, one day after Abdelal announced his plans to resign from Provost at the end of Spring semester, then Faculty Senate Agenda Committee chair Carol Glod said many faculty members had expressed concerns about a lack of “meaningful input and participation in major decisions and university governance.”
Stephen Zoloth, dean of Bouv’eacute; College of Health, has been acting as interim provost since April 1. Economics professor Steve Morrison is the new Senate Agenda Committee chair.
University officials declined to comment about the case. Donnie Perkins, dean and director of the Office of Affirmative Action and Diversity, which received the complaint against Massey that led to his suspension, said complaint proceedings are confidential to protect those involved.
However, Sherman and Lou Dove, head administrative assistant for the math department who worked closely with Massey during the professor’s 19 years at Northeastern, said faculty members are struggling to accept his suspension on a “good faith” basis with the administration. Massey, a six-year department chair, was well-liked and admired throughout the department, Dove said.
“People feel they have not been included in anything,” she said. “So it was more like here’s our chairman and our leader taken away. We don’t know why he’s been taken away. We have no clue what the procedures are, what the charges are. We have been completely ignorant about the entire process. It makes no sense to me why they don’t just sit the people down and say, ‘Look, this is what happened.'”
Several people, including Dove, McOwen and Max Turkewitz, a student who helped create an online petition calling for transparency in Massey’s case, questioned the thoroughness of the investigation and whether current procedures were followed. Because university officials will not comment on the case, it is unclear whether a formal or informal complaint was brought against Massey. A formal complaint includes written documentation and a more thorough investigation, and “the stakes are higher,” Perkins said.
However, “since they didn’t follow either one [of the informal or formal processes], apparently they didn’t feel the need to specify which one,” McOwen said.
McOwen and Sherman said they believed Massey was not awarded his right to appeal, “or if he was, it wasn’t listened to,” McOwen said.
Turkewitz, who works in the math department, and Dove, who sits in the front office, said they never saw signs of an investigation.
Stellar suspended Massey March 3 with signatures from several administration members, including Abdelal and President Joseph Aoun, following an undisclosed complaint filed against him through the Office of Affirmative Action. Massey officially resigned from department chair in late February, although sources familiar with the case said it was in anticipation of forced removal. Stellar declined to comment.
In accordance with McOwen and Dove, Sherman said he understood issues of legality and the need for a system that protects “whistle-blowers.” But Sherman said that even if he could be convinced the university acted rightly in removing Massey, the system was still flawed and their course of action was “dangerous.”
He said it has damaged “the university’s good name,” including in the international math world as the student-started petition spreads across the Internet and has almost 700 signatures, including about two-thirds of Northeastern’s full-time math professors. It has also harmed the hiring process as the department continues its search for new math professors and has demoralized faculty, upset students and negatively impacted classes, he said.
“The students were not happy and they had a right not to be happy for many reasons,” Sherman said, adding that the mood of the department is “a feeling that ranges from very angry outrage to bewilderment as to why this has happened.”
Previous to their meeting with Stellar and Abdelal, department members sent a letter supporting Massey to Stellar in which they requested Massey not be suspended. But McOwen, Sherman and Dove said department members are unsure of the next step to take, and are proceeding cautiously so as not to further jeopardize Massey’s standing at the university.
Morrison, chair of the Faculty Senate Agenda Committee, which appointed the five-person subcommittee to investigate faculty complaint procedures, said its creation was “motivated, of course, by the situation of Professor Massey but it does not in any way deal with him.”
The committee includes Coleen Pantalone and Robert Young, professors in the College of Business Administration; Wallace Sherwood, a professor in the College of Criminal Justice; John Cipolla; a professor in the College of Engineering and Martha Davis, a professor in the School of Law.
Pantalone, who said the committee was formed about three weeks ago and has met once, said members will use the summer to gather information including comparing Northeastern’s procedures to those at other universities and examining legality issues.
She said “most of the talking” will happen in the fall, and she hopes the committee will make its recommendation to the Senate well before the December deadline. Should the committee recommend changing the Faculty Senate handbook and the Senate passes the measure, the president would have to sign off on the measure for it to take effect, Pantalone said. It was unclear whether the Board of Trustees would have to sign the measure.
