They unlawfully fired tenured faculty, treated them like garbage, and couldn’t even follow their own procedures. The only people who should be fired are the administrators responsible for this travesty. One hopes a court will step in and implement some adult supervision at VSU, as well as award compensation to the mistreated faculty.

(Thanks to Jeffrey Roland for the pointer.)

UPDATE: Philosopher Philip Yaure (Virginia Tech) writes with some very interesting information:

In connection with the article about the shameful faculty firings at VSU, I thought you might be interested to know that it’s a pivotal moment in the fight to restore collective bargaining rights to public sector employees, including higher education workers, in Virginia. State employees in Virginia have been deprived of these rights since 1946, when the General Assembly prohibited state agencies from recognizing public employee unions, in an effort to bust union organizing among Black hospital workers at UVA. 

Right now, there’s legislation moving through the General Assembly to restore collective bargaining rights to public employees here– it’s very likely to pass now that the Dems control the trifecta (both chambers + governor). But unfortunately higher admin at universities across the Commonwealth have been lobbying against the bill with some success. The version passed through the House  specifically carves out higher education workers (after some shenanigans in the House Finance committee), although the Senate version includes us. The outcome for higher ed in Virginia going to come down to the reconciliation process in mid-March. About 175 people showed up to a town hall on the importance collective bargaining in higher education in Charlottesville last Saturday, and there are 4 more being held across Virginia this coming Saturday.

All leadership at Virginia universities needs adult supervision to keep them honest, and I reckon their employees are the best ones to provide it– if we can restore our collective bargaining rights!

This is hugely important for all public university faculty in Virginia. The presence of a union and a collective bargaining agreement should put a stop to mischief like that at VSU. But it should be a basic right of all workers to join unions, and be able to bargain collectively.