This just released a couple of hours ago. While the reader can make up their own mind, my view is that it seems pretty weak, especially since his student researcher was also apparently terminated as I’m told her email address at Macquarie ceases to function.
Salby’s statement is here – Anthony
10 July 2013
Macquarie University does not normally comment on the circumstances under which employees leave the University. However, we feel in this instance it is necessary to do so in order to correct misinformation.
The decision to terminate Professor Murry Salby’s employment with Macquarie University had nothing to do with his views on climate change nor any other views. The University supports academic freedom of speech and freedom to pursue research interests.
Professor Salby’s employment was terminated firstly, because he did not fulfil his academic obligations, including the obligation to teach. After repeated directions to teach, this matter culminated in his refusal to undertake his teaching duties and he failed to arrive at a class he had been scheduled to take.
The University took this matter very seriously as the education and welfare of students is a primary concern. The second reason for his termination involved breaches of University policies in relation to travel and use of University resources.
The termination of his employment followed an extensive and detailed internal process, including two separate investigations undertaken by a committee chaired by a former Australian Industrial Relations Commissioner and including a union nominee.
Media Contact:
p: (02) 9850 1039 e: Joanna.wheatley@mq.edu.au
A copy of this release is available online at www.mq.edu.au/newsroom
===========================================================
The PDF I received from MS Wheatley is here: SalbyStatement_July2013
According to the PDF document properties, the statement appears to be authored by Golda Mitchell who can be seen here: http://marketing.mq.edu.au/media_and_communications/contact_the_media_and_communications_team/
Given the furor this has generated, it seems odd they’d leave this to the lowest person on the organizational ladder. -Anthony
Keep in mind that laws differ between countries, even between sub-divisions (e.g. Louisiana and Quebec have remnants of French laws/system due to their history as French colonies rather than British as most of Canada and US were).
Nick & dbstealey,
PACER (the 2nd link) has all the documentation (online) in the federal civil suit that Dr. Salby filed against UC Boulder at .$0.10/page (but no charge if you stay below the quarterly page limit). I’ve already downloaded those particular case documents. Bottom line? Dr. Salby dropped the suit in order to refile a civil suit (IMHO, but NAL, Dr. Salby would have lost the federal case) in the state of Colorado district court system (Denver) and I’m in the process of getting a copy of those documents also (hardcopy only as I see no online versions available).
The federal court case is a rather interesting read though, not a mirror image of the current affair by any means, but there are several similarities IMHO, and on the state of Colorado court side, there might be a few other interesting cases of Dr. Salby’s (the last link charges $2.00/name search, I think there were 8-10 cases with names similar to Murry Salby, with a definite hit on the state court case that Dr. Salby filed).
Deja vu? You decide.
” …two separate investigations undertaken by a committee chaired by a former Australian Industrial Relations Commissioner and including a union nominee … ”
But not apparently including the person whose conduct was under investigation? That is a blatant breach of industrial relations law, as well as principles of natural justice.
Did the “committee” comprise people who were parties to the dispute? Eg judge and jury in their own cause? Were audio recordings made of the proceedings?
“Union nominee” in this context means nominated by the person under investigation. Not quite the same as “union representative” which means “accredited” by the union, eg having a role protected under industrial relations legislation.
Well, you really need to see the contract to make a decision. If, as is common in Australian universities, there was provision for a “duty statement” as well as the contract, and if the contract had vague provisions such as, “duties may be varied according to the requirements of the department” or words to that effect, then he could have been asked to teach. Note that the university states that he was given “repeated directions” so it is not just a matter of failing to take a class once. Reading between the lines it sound to me as if a sufficiently bad atmosphere had developed, probably due to conflicts over resources, that when told that that he was scheduled to take classes, he refused. This is speculation on my part – you really need to see the contract, and the duty statement, and the record of alterations, if any, to the duty statement.
As for breaches of travel policies, the most likely is if they decided he was mixing private with official travel i.e getting the university to pay for travel which had not been agreed to be an official trip. However, again that is speculation and you would need to see the official records, which is unlikely short of FOIA requests.
I wonder if oral representations were made to Salby that there’d be no teaching load–but the written contract didn’t say that. Or if there are two ways of reading the written contract.
Steve McIntyre, “He might be better off eating his pride and sucking it up. If Salby had another offer in hand, then sure, he should take it. ”
Salby’s letter won’t make it any easier to find a new job. Troublemakers who go public with long lists of complaints are not what employers look for. At least he has to be quick providing evidence, showing that his complaints are justified and not just a grudge for losing his job. On the other hand, he has been around for a long time so he should have friends at different universities who might vouch for him. For a young scientist a letter like that would be professional suicide.
I do not know what the visa and work-permit position is currently in Australia. But I would think that not having a ‘registered’ contract for an employee and telling the government that you had, or varying that contract to a level that the government would not have supported a work-permit, may well reach the level of criminality. This could apply to both the professor and his PhD student.
“Well, I posted the actual judgment in his Federal case against the University of Colorado. That was apparently a Civil Rights claim – there is reference to a suit under state law.
It does underline Steve McIntyre’s point about avoiding litigation. But the university grievance option would be complicated by his absence from the misconduct hearing.”
“Sovereign immunity” claimed in the judgment is one of the worst dodges governments use – that if a person were to win damages against a state it would come out of the pockets of the taxpayers and that governments only exist for the good of their citizens. As if a lawsuit against a corporation doesn’t come out of the pockets of its innocent customers or possibly result in the firing of innocent employees. When governments are finally made vulnerable to suits, then we’ll know just how crooked they’ve been all these years, including public university faculty.
“Ian W says:
July 10, 2013 at 12:34 pm”
If either party had no “visa” to work, then working would, strictly speaking, be illegal and could result in deportation. They would have needed, at the very least, a 457 visa, or some other visa for academia institutions “allowing” them to work/study. However, depends how big your stick is. Universities, I would imagine have “some influence” over immigration. I know I was working in Australia in 1998 without a work visa, for about 3 months, until the visa was granted. Nudge nudge wink wink kind of thing!
Nick Stokes says:
July 10, 2013 at 12:11 pm
“Droit du seigneur?”
Yes, basically “we can (redacted) you however we please.”
“Given the furor this has generated, it seems odd they’d leave this to the lowest person on the organizational ladder. -Anthony”
Sounds to me like they realize the cat is out of the bag and anyone there with any clout is keeping as far from this as they possibly can. No one wants to take responsibility. Has the press got hold of this? This could turn out to be a very important case with regard to CAGW=shenanigans exposure.
The moral is anyone in her/his right mind should stay away from Australia. That’s obviously not an option for Australians though. Their duty at this point is to fight, tooth & nail, for their own freedom. There is no one else in the entire world who’d do that favor to them.
Max Hugoson says:
July 10, 2013 at 11:18 am
Dear Ms. Wheatley:
Is the Australian use of English that divergent from the USA usage, or is this just “poor writing”?
“Professor Salby’s employment was terminated firstly, because he did not fulfil his academic obligations, including the obligation to teach. After repeated directions to teach, this matter culminated in his refusal to undertake his teaching duties and he failed to arrive at a class he had been scheduled to take.”
Do you mean he was scheduled to GIVE the class??? “Take over the teaching of” the class? The matter is not clear at all from the way this is written.
Also, the use of “firstly” is very poor English usage. It should be simply FIRST…please check the standard English usage guides.
Not according to Fowler’s Modern English Usage.
dbstealey says:
July 10, 2013 at 10:35 am
It is long established in academia that missing classes is not a firing offense. It might occasionally turn up as a firing excuse.
ICU says:
July 10, 2013 at 10:36 am
Looks like an interesting case dismissed for lack of federal jurisdiction without regard to substance. Do you know the complaint details, or you just found the case in the database, deadlinking it to us who don’t have any access to it to find out what was it really all about, maybe just to evoke impression prof. Salby unsucessfully sued University of Colorado staff in civil rights suit and that he is a sort of complainer?
If it is so, I don’t buy this. Bright courageous minds ( I’ve seen the prof. Salby presentations and I seriously think he has it exceptionaly comprehensibly right when it comes to facts and their interpretation) often are oppressed by the herd of ignorance status-quo addicted inepts manipulated by those who profit from this dope dealing – especially in the academic establishments this looks being almost a precept.
I don’t know how many viable ideas were destroyed by this groupthink phenomena in the past just because the incurable mutualised stupidity wasn’t able to grasp on them, but when it comes to the people criticising the CAGW trendy hype (so barely scientifically substantiated that it must circumvent the scientific method using the “scientific consensus” demagoguery which intimately reminds a totalitarianism or religion) there already certainly emerges a pattern when it comes to their academic elimination.
Anyway it very much looks this petty world of the anti-CO2 church of solar powerstations subsidies lovers was now intervened over by their worshiped sun, although perhaps not at all as they would like it to, and I imagine how could the ones – who really know what chiefly drives the surface temperatures and why, just because they’re able to – laugh when they realize what happens next decade and how funny this all yet could be..
Gene Selkov says:
July 10, 2013 at 10:51 am
It seems that you had at least one supporter with serious clout. The facts of your case might have had nothing to do with the fight.
Theo Goodwin says: July 10, 2013 at 1:22 pm
“It is long established in academia that missing classes is not a firing offense.”
But “refusal to undertake his teaching duties” “fter repeated directions to teach” would be a firing offense in any context.
Given the furor this has generated, it seems odd they’d leave this to the lowest person on the organizational ladder. -Anthony
It is their way of saying “No Comment” to further questions.
Gene Selkov says:
July 10, 2013 at 10:51 am
Just to add a little humor to a grim conversation, I knew a graduate student whose career was terminated in his fourth year. He sued. After reading the complaint, the university counsel told the graduate department that they would reinstate the student and apologize. After all of this was settled, one of the professors who had vigorously pursued the termination remarked that the student had much more substance than they had known.
Nick Stokes says:
July 10, 2013 at 1:30 pm
As noted above, if he had been reduced to a grading assistant, as he says, then the assignment is altogether illegitimate for a professor. Teaching assignments have to reflect ordinary practice in the department.
According to Salby’s account, when trying to enforce his entitlement to resources, etc he discovered that his contract had never been formally registered and was therefore not enforceable.
That cuts both ways.
Surely, if the contract was never established, Macquarie cannot invoke its terms as the basis for expelling him?
Theo Goodwin says: July 10, 2013 at 1:44 pm
“As noted above, if he had been reduced to a grading assistant, as he says, then the assignment is altogether illegitimate for a professor.”
There may be some exaggeration there. But from Macquarie’s viewpoint, what was the professor doing? He published two papers in five years. He updated his textbook. He took on one PhD student. And he refuses teaching. Can this go on forever?
Funny how things work in academia…
The LSE doesn’t want to withdraw Saif Gaddafi’s PhD thesis – despite the fact that it was a plagiarized hack, which must have been known to the supervisors involved, written on the dictator’s son’s behalf…meanwhile of all the academics at Macquarie, who gets the sack? (Answer: the one who isn’t toeing the party line).
Background on Gaddafi:
http://russian-front.com/2011/02/27/saif-gaddady-ph-d-and-the-london-school-of-economics/
…and Dr. Gaddafi’s professors and examiners were well aware of their protege’s talents: “Mr Christensen recalls: “Saif was not, how to say this politely, the brightest of students. Not only was he totally uninterested in economics, he lacked the intellectual depth to study at that level, and showed no willingness to read let alone do course work.” (see http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/5880/5880).
This is what goes on at the LSE and Macquarie, imagine the situation at the University of East Anglia…
Nick Stokes says:
July 10, 2013 at 1:59 pm
Theo Goodwin says: July 10, 2013 at 1:44 pm
“As noted above, if he had been reduced to a grading assistant, as he says, then the assignment is altogether illegitimate for a professor.”
“There may be some exaggeration there. But from Macquarie’s viewpoint, what was the professor doing? He published two papers in five years. He updated his textbook. He took on one PhD student. And he refuses teaching. Can this go on forever?”
Your views on academia are naive. The only carrots-sticks for tenured professors are salary, promotion, and release time. Academia has many tenured professors who have never received promotion or release time and have received only small pay increments. I am acquainted with one who retired as a tenured assistant professor.
Two papers and a book update do not constitute impressive output but neither do they constitute the output of a slug.
If you are thinking of defending Macquarie then be cautious. If any one of Salby’s allegations proves to be true, especially that he was given the assignment of grading, then among academics Macquarie’s stock goes into the mud. In practical terms, that would mean that someone would take a job there only if he had no hope of a job elsewhere.
By the way, your “response” to me isn’t a response because you did not address my claim about teaching. Serving as a grader is not a teaching job for a professor.
Nick Stokes says:
July 10, 2013 at 1:59 pm
…
There may be some exaggeration there. But from Macquarie’s viewpoint, what was the professor doing? He published two papers in five years. He updated his textbook. He took on one PhD student. And he refuses teaching. Can this go on forever?
——————–
Nick,
Can you propose any credible scenario under this interpretation to explain the cancellation of the non-refundable ticket, under the assumption that what Prof. Salby says with respect to this cancellation is so? I’m at a loss to think of one, but possibly I lack the imagination and conviction regarding the University’s propriety that you may have.
Thanks,