In July, the University of Nebraska Board of Regents upheld a decision to release Dr. Jeffrey A. Johnson, a professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Aviation Institute. The university maintains that Johnson was not reappointed because of a substandard academic record. Johnson, however, claims that the administration’s decision was politically motivated. According to Johnson, he was released because of the views expressed in an e-mail he had written.

     During the Fall semester of 1998, Johnson sent an e-mail message opposing a university proposal to extend benefits to the "partners" of homosexual faculty members. The e-mail was addressed to students and faculty listed on the campus e-mail system. The next semester, Johnson was not reappointed for employment. While the administration insists that the two events are unrelated, the facts surrounding Johnson’s release raise serious questions about Nebraska’s commitment to academic freedom.

     Dr. Johnson began teaching at UNO’s Aviation Institute in the Fall of 1997. The following Spring he was evaluated by his department and received favorable recommendations from the department chair, Dr. B. J. Reed, the dean, Dr. David Hinton, and the departmental advisory committee. Consequently, Johnson’s teaching contract was renewed.

     In their evaluation letters, both Reed and Hinton praised Johnson’s performance. Reed predicted that "Dr. Johnson will be a strong contributing member to the department in years to come." And Hinton reported that "informal student feedback…was favorable, with students characterizing Dr. Johnson as knowledgeable, accessible, and demanding. Dr. Johnson’s work has been published in some of the field’s major journals and it is apparent that he has the capabilities to continue to earn national recognition for his research and scholarly contributions."

     The following Fall, Johnson sent the aforementioned e-mail, and subsequently was found to be unsatisfactory at his next evaluation in the Spring of 1999. "I cannot support Dr. Jeffrey Johnson’s reappointment," wrote Dr. Reed, "His teaching, research and service have failed to make adequate progress to justify reappointment. Dr. Johnson’s recent performance in teaching and research indicate, in my judgment, that he is unlikely to become outstanding in either area." Dr. Hinton stated, "last year I noted that Dr. Johnson’s first semester of teaching evaluations were favorable…. Since then, however, he has shown little if any progress toward developing a record of outstanding instruction." Unfortunately for the university, Dr. Johnson’s record appears to contradict these evaluations.

     In the Fall of 1997, the semester in which Johnson received favorable evaluations from Dr. Reed and Dr. Hinton, Johnson’s overall teaching score average, which is calculated from student evaluations, was 2.28. In the next two semesters, Spring and Fall of 1998, Johnson’s average improved to 2.15 and 1.72 respectively (lower scores indicating more favorable evaluations). That is, his student evaluations for those semesters were better than they had been in 1997, and they had improved each semester.

     It should be noted that the only measures of a professor’s teaching performance are student evaluations and the direct observations of another faculty member, i.e., by attending the classes of that professor. Dr. Johnson’s initial student evaluations were favorable according to Dr. Hinton, and improved in each of the following semesters. And, because another faculty member had not evaluated any of Dr. Johnson’s classes, the student evaluations were the only available measure of Johnson’s performance.

     Johnson explained that during his first evaluation he was advised to conduct research on public administration, rather than aviation education; however, no schedule for the completion of his research agenda was proposed (usually a professor is given several years to establish a research agenda), nor was it ever suggested that failure to produce immediate and complete results would be grounds for release.

     As for service (i.e., service to the university, the community, and the profession), Dr. Johnson belonged to numerous aviation-related organizations. He was involved with the Aviation Explorers, a Boy Scouts of America program which teaches Scouts about aviation. He was associate editor of the Collegiate Aviation Review, the University Aviation Association secretary, and was elected to the office of airport authority in Blair, Nebraska. Johnson also served on two university committees. Johnson, in fact, was rendering more service than many of UNO’s senior faculty members.

     According to testimony given by Dr. Johnson before the Board of Regents, Dr. Hinton offered two other explanations for the unfavorable evaluations: Dr. Johnson had not attended enough teaching seminars, and his student evaluation scores were below the college average. Yet, the University of Nebraska does not have a policy which requires faculty members to attend a predetermined number of teaching seminars. And, according to Karen Ressegieu, Dr. Hinton’s secretary, college averages for student evaluation scores have not been available for several years. How, then, could Dr. Hinton compare Johnson’s scores to the college average, if the college average had not been calculated?

     In addition to these discrepancies, Dr. Johnson was given a tier one exceptional performance raise by Vice Chancellor Hodgson after the decision had been made by Dr. Reed and Dr. Hinton not to reappoint him. University policy, as presented in the University Guidelines on Reappointment, Promotion and Tenure Recommendations, states that "Exceptional Performance Salary Increases are meant to reward superior or exceptional performance." Commenting on the raise, Johnson told Campus Report that "No logical and rational thinking administration would ever give an excellent performance raise to a faculty member deemed unsatisfactory across the board in teaching, research, and service."

     The move has left many on campus wondering that if a professor can be fired for speaking his mind in a field as apolitical as aviation, how much less would the level of tolerance of political differences be in such fields as history or economics.

     Despite the lack of direct evidence correlating Dr. Johnson’s release and the e-mail that he had sent, any objective observer has to wonder why a second-year professor who received a favorable evaluation his first semester and whose overall teaching scores continued to improve each semester would not be reappointed. Could it be because his superiors disagreed with his views?