Classic case of throwing money at a problem to make it go away. Maybe if the Chancellor covers his ears, any other allegations about bad stuff happening in UCB will go away too…

“consider the high probability of a biased nature of an ‘internal faculty review panel’”

Is there any evidence for this, or do you mean one of those a priori high probabilities?

If a professor believes a student has been found wrongly guilty by a internal university process of sexual misconduct, they should refer that student to someone who is actually competent to help, and who does not have a conflict of interest.

in my (albeit limited, but greater than once) experience, if you really do have a case, finding an attorney to take you on pro bono is both possible and feasible.

This is not the area of law I work in, but I can say that, in many areas of law, this claim is not at all obviously true, even for people who are highly sympathetic and in much more urgent need of help. It is especially unlikely to be true of the case might linger for years. At the very least, no assumption about the strength of his case can be drawn from this.

Forgive me if I’m mis-remembering something, but I believe the issue was a bit bigger than just that he “pointed out” what he believed to be a false claim (which is already a bit fraught, unless he has some real, substantiated insider knowledge beyond, say, his own judgment of the accused’s character or some such). Iirc, he (allegedly) went around interrogating faculty and other grad students about things like the accuser’s sex life, in order to compile a 35 page “document” (at least partly about the accuser’s bad character qua sex life / drinking / etc) that was somehow meant to prove the innocence of the accused (I guess?). If that’s right, I suppose it might be possible for a reasonable person to believe that this merely exhibits bad judgment or a certain social incompetence rather than straightforward retaliation. What’s not plausible is that he’s being summarily pushed out because They don’t like that he “points out” injustice.

Unless that comment was some kind of joke, given Barnett’s $2m defamation suit against the university for Jaggar’s support of the accuser. “This will surely cause people to hesitate to stand up for their own students” indeed.

@Yet Another Female Grad Student: Not quite. The ODH altered a significant number of the witnesses’ testimonies about what happened that night. Barnett took the report to the witnesses and asked, “Is this what you said?” In many cases, the answer was “no” or “part of it”. The document contained the errors of the ODH report in its reporting of what the witnesses said.

To agree with Matt’s comment above. Even if you have a slam-dunk case, getting a good attorney to sign on is more difficult than one might expect. In fact, in a case with which I am familiar, the claimant was only able to secure (paid) representation after a lawyer-friend made some referrals. The reasons for the difficulty vary greatly: the firm is already involved in a huge case, the attorney has a conflict of interest, the attorney doesn’t feel comfortable in that area of the law, the attorney’s plate is already full, etc. Moreover, in the Barnett case, the adversary is a large state university with huge amounts of money and lawyers on the payroll, whose sole job is to defend the university. Some lawyers simply can’t afford to become involved in such a process.

What follows is from the faculty panel report. They concluded that he did not retaliate, but they also concluded that his behavior was completely inappropriate. The lionizing of Barnet here and elsewhere is bewildering to me. At best, I can’t see how one’s opinion goes beyond “a pox on both their houses”.

“We find that the University showed by clear and convincing evidence that Professor Barnett engaged in conduct that falls below the minimal standards of professional integrity in conducting his enquiries and filing this letter and supporting document as written as discussed below:
• Professor Barnett’s arguments in the letter and supporting document filed with the Chancellor and the President went well beyond what was needed to register a complaint/appeal. The alternative options of sending a letter of concern that focused on the ODH omissions and conclusions but omitted the excessive details, unnecessary arguments and alternative scenarios regarding the evening in question would have been a more effective means of registering a complaint.
• Many of the comments in the Barnett letter and supporting document were inappropriate (e.g., hearsay… sarcasm, etc.). (p.12)”

If anyone wants more information to draw their own conclusions, the faculty panel report is available online.
http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site21/2015/0113/20150113_093506_Barnett%20Initial%20Panel%20Report.pdf

I’m amused at the idea expressed through #16 and in the faculty report that an undocumented “letter of concern” to an administrator would have done anything at all. In my experience, such letters are balled up and trashed upon receipt.

Here’s another passage from the faculty report which perhaps explains what they mean by sarcasm and excessive detail:

“The Barnett letter and supporting document is offensive and derogatory towards the Complainant. For example, Professor Barnett’s letter unnecessarily paints a very negative picture of the Complainant’s behavior and character (e.g., is the type of person who would fabricate a story, regardless of its consequences….’). Many comments were unnecessary if the primary reason for writing the report was to point out that the ODH report is flawed, rather than to paint a negative picture of the Complainant.

“Professor Barnett’s ‘evidence’ in the letter and supporting document is not entirely based on factual evidence (e.g., Witness 5 report is clearly hearsay and her opinion; The three hypotheses and ensuing arguments have several elements that are not based in witness testimonies).

“Even though Professor Barnett claimed that he did not intend for his letter and supporting document to be circulated widely, in the end this did occur. It is reasonable that he should consider that loss of confidentiality could occur with resultant adverse effects on the Complainant. For example, if he wanted to be sure that this didn’t happen he could have delivered a hard copy to the Chancellor and President and not circulate electronic copies to the Respondent and Witness 1. The fact that Barnett apparently permitted Witness 1 to have access to all other witness names and statements and drafts of his letter and supporting document was inappropriate. Professor Barnett’s failure to adequately protect the Complainant (a student in his department) from the effects of his actions falls below minimal standards of professional integrity.”

I think this supports YAFGS’s and AnonProf’s takes; the issue is not that Barnett was insufficiently formal and that the details wasted the President’s time, but that he was disparaging the Complainant’s character. It also seems as though he sent the document to more than just select university officials, but also to Respondent and Witness 1.

It is at least somewhat concerning from a procedural standpoint that the university’s president apparently chose to ignore the panel’s recommendations, and the difficulty of engaging in a protracted legal battle surely also played a role here. But the available evidence suggests that even if Barnett’s intent wasn’t retaliatory he, to put it mildly, fell considerably short of best practices when dealing with sexual assault allegations.

The slam against Yet Another Female Grad Student seems particularly uncalled for. If we think the evidence shows that another poster is wrong, we should explain how, shouldn’t we?

@20
None of us I think have read any of Barnett’s letter to the administration or the accompanying documentation. The concern many of us have is that the essential grounds both the faculty panel and administration gave for punishing him was civility: it wasn’t what he said, but rather the tone in which he said it. That is, they concluded that he did not retaliate against the accuser or harass her in his investigation, but because he wrote a hypothetical in terms that other people did not like, he engaged in misconduct. Those grounds (basically tone-policing) are very similar to the justification by Illinois as to why they “un-hired” Steven Salaita — that he talked about issues in a way that the administration felt was inappropriate.

In other words, we are concerned that this is part of a wider movement to introduce a very vague “civility” requirement into hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions.

It was a 3 to 1 vote against termination. That’s as close to a split decision as it is a unanimous vote. And almost everything they described as bad behavior concerns the content, not the tone, of his document and the means by which he conducted his “investigation”.

I just can’t see why the proper conclusion isn’t something like: Barnett acted terribly in all sorts of ways, but he shouldn’t have been fired and the administration acted incredibly poorly as well.

@23 The faculty report indicated that the content they disliked was part of one of three hypotheticals which they called too philosophical to be appropriate, not as I read it, a direct accusation leveled at the student. Quoting from the report: “The letter also used an alternative construct approach to make a case for ODH bias that necessitated creation of an alternate hypothesis (hypothesis #1) that was further unflattering to the Complainant. While creating alternative hypotheses may be useful in philosophical argument, its use and excessive elaboration in building supporting and refuting arguments in a sensitive sexual harassment context definitely showed extremely poor judgment.” In other words, he was punished because he wrote a hypothetical in a way that was “unflattering.”

@24 The vote was 4 to 1 against termination, not 3 to 1. I would agree with your conclusion that the administration acted incredibly poorly throughout this case, and in addition in regards the site visit controversy there.

I agree that it’s hard to sort out whether the “fabricate” quotation refers to one of the three hypotheticals, or to a purported description of the Complainant. Here’s the whole passage: “The Barnett letter and supporting document is offensive and derogatory towards the Complainant. For example, Professor Barnett’s letter unnecessarily paints a very negative picture of the Complainant’s behavior and character (e.g., is the type of person who would fabricate a story, regardless of its consequences….’). Many comments were unnecessary if the primary reason for writing the report was to point out that the ODH report is flawed, rather than to paint a negative picture of the Complainant”
My best guess is that the passage is referring to the content of one of the hypotheticals. I think this because it refers to the comments as “unnecessary” rather than “slanderous”. The authors of the report thought the hypotheticals were unnecessary in a report aimed at pointing out the flaws in the ODH report.
As I said, this is just a best guess, and I’m open to hearing other interpretations.

This is astounding. The document literally says that his behavior was unprofessional in large part because HE SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED OTHER PEOPLE TO VIOLATE CONFIDENTIALITY. Have you people defending the decision stopped for a moment to think about what this means? It means, in effect, that anyone who attempts to complain or blow a whistle about this sort of thing is automatically behaving unprofessionally because it is possible that the people to whom they are complaining might randomly decide to dessiminate their confidential complaints. This is madness. The people who keep citing the decision as scripture should actually bother to read it. In effect, the only grounds for unprofessional behavior is a document that was intended to be sent to university officials who are responsible for the ODH, and a single disputed conversation. The panel found that the actual investigation Barnett conducted was NOT below minimum standards. Since one disputed he-said-she-said conversation is not a reasonable grounds for any sort of punishment, the entire decision must really rest on the content of the document.

What are these professional standards such that they apply not only to what is said publicly but also to what is said in what is supposed to be a confidential complaint? It is the burden of the people who handle the complaints to sort through the content. Do you people really want university administrators to have the power to decide whether the content of a confidential complaint that no one else will see is grounds for immediate summary pubishment? You are essentially giving them the power to fire and destroy any whistle blower as they see fit. I couldn’t give a good god damn about moralizing Barnett one way or another. He could be a monster and this decision would still be unacceptable because of the precedent that it sets.

“The document literally says that his behavior was unprofessional in large part because HE SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED OTHER PEOPLE TO VIOLATE CONFIDENTIALITY. Have you people defending the decision stopped for a moment to think about what this means? It means, in effect, that anyone who attempts to complain or blow a whistle about this sort of thing is automatically behaving unprofessionally because it is possible that the people to whom they are complaining might randomly decide to dessiminate their confidential complaints.”

The paragraph about violation of confidentiality clearly states, and uses as its example of how Barnett should have expected confidentiality to be breached, that he sent electronic copies of his document to “Respondent and Witness 1.” That is to say, the person who was accused of sexual assault and someone else who was at the party. It also says that he showed Witness 1 all his witness names and statements. It also said (section 1b) that “the evidence suggests that the Respondent was a primary source of confidential information,” in the context of arguing that Barnett did not engage in retaliation by spreading rumors.

Which is to say, the panel thinks that the evidence shows that the rumors came largely from the Respondent to whom Barnett sent his dossier. That does seem entirely predictable, and it absolutely does not mean that “the people to whom [he was] complaining… randomly decide[d] to dessiminate [his] confidential complaints.” Where is your evidence that the Chancellor of UCB and the President of CU, who were the official recipients of the letter, violated confidentiality? Nor was it “a confidential complaint that no one else will see.”

I missed your claim in @17 that “the document was only sent to a few key university officials,” but that’s clearly contradicted by the report.