Purdue Tenured Math Prof salary set at $0 to force him out?

[jimbogumbo]

https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202302/rnoti-p196.pdf?adat=February%202023

[Wahoo Redux]

https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202302/rnoti-p196.pdf?adat=February%202023

Hmmmmm...sounds a bit...dodgy.

Doesn't this guy have a contract?  Isn't it against the law to pay someone below minimum wage?  How could Donnelly's salary be "0?"

Donnelly is listed on the Purdue website.  His RMP are abysmally low.  Someone has posted a number of PDFs of letters, documents, and emails from what I assume is Donnelly's personnel file on the web: the documents paint a pretty terrible picture of Donnelly's teaching and as a scholar; the address has a "math.princeton.edu" URL----Fetterman, the author of the letter, teaches at Princeton.  I was going to post a link but I think that would be inappropriate.  Maybe I shouldn't even have mentioned it.  One of the correspondences mentions reducing Donnelly's salary by "20%."

WTF?

[Caracal]

https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202302/rnoti-p196.pdf?adat=February%202023

Hmmmmm...sounds a bit...dodgy.

Doesn't this guy have a contract?  Isn't it against the law to pay someone below minimum wage?  How could Donnelly's salary be "0?"



WTF?

Yeah, just as a practical matter, there has to be more to it than that. Obviously, the school can't have tell him he can keep his job but they just aren't going to pay him. I have heard of things like threats to take away an office from a faculty member who was a terrible teacher and did no research, as a way to get them to accept a retirement package.

Some of the other language is a bit perplexing. A chair doesn't  "forbid" a professor from teaching certain classes-they just assign them to different courses. The thing about a classroom script he's not allowed to deviate from also seems strange. Among other things, that would be really deadly to sit through for a student...

[secundem_artem]

I followed all the links and read most of the documents available on the Princeton website.

This is  tenured full professor who apparently: (1) cannot figure out how to use Zoom; (2) cannot figure out the LMS Purdue uses; (3) was given multiple opportunities to improve & failed to meet most of them, including writing a basic course syllabus and course schedule; (4) has done no meaningful research lately; (5) has abysmal teaching evaluations; (6) has had his teaching load reduced to zero and thereby his salary reduced to zero; (7) has been given the option to retire but refuses; (8) forgot to teach his second class one day because he was tired and confused brushing the snow off his car; (9) has been soaking up a salary in the $145K range while all of this is going on.

Clowns like this make the rest of us look bad and do us no favors given the current public impression of higher education and those of us who work there.  He needs to go.  Were I his dept head, I would next pull his office out from underneath him.

I'm probably about this guy's age.  My fondest wish is get out the door a year before somebody says, "Somebody really needs to talk to that guy." 

Read the room dude and leave before your dignity takes an even stronger hit when they yank your tenure out from underneath you and your department loses the position.

[Ruralguy]

This is the sort of guy who would have bombed out anywhere, it seems, at least if he was performing in that way.

Was he ever a high achiever or is this some sort of dementia thing?

[Wahoo Redux]

Sounds like dementia to me.  I almost posted that.  If if it is dementia, I hope Purdue will be kindly when they remove him.

His teaching is apparently so bad that he has his own dedicated thread on Reddit.

But what is the deal with posting private documents and that "Letter to the Editor?"

[Katrina Gulliver]

The guy has to be at least 75 (PhD 1974). He clearly (was) good in his field, with several stints at the Insitute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
This situation is an advertisement for why compulsory retirement was a good thing.

[Caracal]

has had his teaching load reduced to zero and thereby his salary reduced to zero;

I'm still curious about this. Is this some sort of involuntary leave procedure being applied on the grounds of medical disability? Tenure wouldn't really have any meaning if all you had to do was tell someone "oh you still work here, but we won't give you any classes or pay you." I would assume you have to show that someone isn't capable of teaching to any kind of acceptable standard any longer.

[Volhiker78]

The guy has to be at least 75 (PhD 1974). He clearly (was) good in his field, with several stints at the Insitute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
This situation is an advertisement for why compulsory retirement was a good thing.

My wife got her BS in Math from Purdue in the 80's. She might have had him.   Sad situation.  I don't think compulsory retirement based on age is good but after 70,  its probably a good idea to require medical examinations and specifically cognition assessment by a neurologist.  I don't think the AMS should have printed this letter.  It doesn't do either the writer or Dr. Donnelly any favors. 

[Katrina Gulliver]

I don't think compulsory retirement based on age is good but after 70,  its probably a good idea to require medical examinations and specifically cognition assessment by a neurologist. 

Then that's just setting people up to be forcibly shuffled off by a diagnosis - and legal wrangling surrounding it, no doubt. I used to think compulsory retirement ages were unfair to those who continue to be effective at older ages, but giving everyone a fixed career horizon is now I think on balance more healthy. People can continue to be effective and engaged with emeritus status.

As for the letters, I agree. It appears the Princeton colleague is trying to be a booster for the Donnelly, but the packet of letters and emails he put online is doing him no favors.

[jimbogumbo]

When I went to Purdue in the 1970s I taught a class in the same classroom after the same type prof for a week. After that he had no students, and the class was cancelled.He almost always taught no classes, because as soon as students went to a "lecture" or two they all dropped. He was never assigned a service course. We always wondered what led the department to keep him, and how it could.

[pgher]

Tenure does not excuse you from doing your job. If a professor is actually unable to teach, they shouldn't teach and shouldn't be paid to not teach.

A typical tenured position at a place like Purdue has a significant research expectation. But again, if a professor is not actually doing research, they shouldn't be paid to not do research.

[research_prof]

My understanding is that tenure is granted, so that someone can try high risk, high reward things in terms of research, teaching, etc. I agree that it should not be used as an excuse to not do your job (many faculty unfortunately do that--I had several of them at my old institution). At the same time, I believe that this matter could have been handled in a more courteous manner by Purdue.

[kaysixteen]

This seems at least somewhat comparable to the issue of requiring elderly drivers to take annual licensing re-exams  after a certain age, to include not only eye tests but also some sort of evals designed to ensure that they remain competent to be on the road?  In the case of tenured academics, when and how might such reevals occur?

[marshwiggle]

This problem exists for the same reason it's hard to investigate police misconduct. The profession (cops or faculty) form a circle to "protect their own" rather than admitting the privileges of the position (to carry weapons for cops, of to have all kinds of professional leeway for tenured faculty) can be seriously abused.