University makes offer to banned prof

The University of New Hampshire sent a letter Friday (September 7) to the banned chair of the biochemistry and molecular biology department, John Collins, saying that he can be reinstated but no longer as the chair of the department, Collins told The Scientist.Collins, who has been chair of the department for two years, was banned from campus on June 29, a day after allegedly kicking a trash can, yelling and making threats about another faculty member, Stacia Sower.The letter came after an August 20 meeting between the university administration and Collins during which the university said it had concluded its investigation into the incident. Collins has been banned from the campus since June and requires a police escort to be on campus.In addition to losing the position of chair of the department, Collins said he would be required to write a formal letter of apology to the university provost and to Sower, take an anger management class, and maintain a letter in his personal academic file outlining the incident."The provost's review was profoundly incomplete," Collins told The Scientist, "My lawyer and I are formulating our response. My lawyer will be talking to their lawyer over the next couple of days."What happened in June was very different from how the incident was portrayed in the media and in court hearings over the summer, Collins said. He added that his outburst on the day of the incident was not in earnest; after receiving a parking ticket, he was in the department building with a woman who worked in Sower's lab who egged him on to "get out his anger," and he yelled to "mock" her suggestion. At the August meeting Collins presented to the provost several dozen affidavits from other faculty members regarding incidents each had had with Sower. Collins threatened to file for an injunction against the university's ban and present the affidavits in federal court if the university did not reinstate him, apologize for their actions against him and pay for all his legal fees.Research on the oncogene SARC in Collins' lab has ceased since he was banned from campus; a manuscript that was meant to be submitted for publication in July is still sitting on his desk, he said. "This ban from campus has devastated my research and had a devastating impact on me and my graduate students," Collins said. "It's unworkable to go there and try to do work with a police officer standing over me."The university did not return calls to confirm the contents of the letter or offer comment.Sower sought a restraining order against Collins following the June incident. The court hearing regarding that order will be October 30. Sower declined to comment on the situation. "There has been a lot of support [for Collins] from the faculty," said Andrew Laudano, assistant professor in the biochemistry and molecular biology department. "People here do not consider him a threat."Andrea Gawrylewski mail@the-scientist.comLinks within this article:A. Gawrylewski, "UNH makes offer to banned professor," The Scientist, September 10, 2007. http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53575John Collins http://biochemistry.unh.edu/Faculty/Collins/index.htmlA. Gawrylewski, "Biology dept. embroiled in controversy," The Scientist, July 19, 2007. http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53383Stacia Sower http://www.unh.edu/biochemistry/sower/index.htmlAndrew Laudano http://biochemistry.unh.edu/Faculty/Laudano/index.html

University makes offer to banned prof

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