[throwaway894345]

I don’t see how it’s in the university’s interest to malign and railroad a professor, presumably because he challenged the orthodoxy a bit with respect to its sexist policies. Especially when the cost is him more-or-less idle for the better part of the year (but still paid) as well as the cost for all of these administrators and lawyers fabricating nonsense for over a year. Further, the employee in this case had tenure protection; the university abuses Title IX and other policies to railroad him out of his position.

If there is an inconsistency, it’s that the folks who love reducing everything to power dynamics are somehow not analyzing this as a clear-cut case of powerful university administrators abusing their considerable power over an employee. I mean, the provost made the unprecedented move of prosecuting a case that her underlings were adjudicating and flouted the requirement that she present her argument a week in advance. The author provided lots and lots of verifiable supporting evidence.

[kilo_bravo_3]

It's a straight up reaction to the market.

The majority of people in the market the university cares about think that professors who bang their subordinates should be railroaded out the institution.

The power dynamics bit is the best part. The voluntary collective of rational actors known as "the university" can choose to ignore violations of unjust policies (the absolute authority given the assent of the managed) the same way jurors can choose to ignore violations of the law though jury nullification.

Freedom includes the freedom to bend the rules and have an arbitrary and subjective number of people nod in agreement, thus making it "Okay", no?

If the above statement is not true, then literally, in the literal dictionary definition of the the word "literal" every single aspect of society will have to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up.