MISSOURI PROFESSOR WHO CURSED AT POLICE FIRED

A profanity-laced outburst by media professor Melissa Click caught by a cop's body cam was described as "appalling" by the University of Missouri's interim chancellor

By Koran Addo

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
February 25, 2016

COLUMBIA, Missouri -- The University of Missouri Board of Curators has fired embattled professor Melissa Click.

Click was caught on camera in November calling for "muscle" while blocking student journalists from covering a campus demonstration. A second video surfaced this month showing Click cursing at a police officer during the University of Missouri-Columbia's homecoming parade.

Later, more than 100 Republican lawmakers in the Missouri Legislature sent a letter to the university calling on the administration to fire Click.

Interim Chancellor Hank Foley said Sunday that Click’s conduct was “appalling” and that he was angry and disappointed at her “pattern of misconduct.”

The board voted 4-2 in favor of termination during a closed session in Kansas City, with Pamela Quigg Henrickson and John R. Phillips voting no. The vote came after an investigation that involved videos and interviews, including Click, and more than 20 witnesses.

Henrickson, chair, said the board believes that Click’s conduct was not compatible with university policies and did not meet expectations for a university faculty member and "demands serious action."

"The board respects Dr. Click’s right to express her views and does not base this decision on her support for students engaged in protest or their views," Henrickson said. "However, Dr. Click was not entitled to interfere with the rights of others, to confront members of law enforcement or to encourage potential physical intimidation against a student."

Interim Chancellor Hank Foley said he agrees with the decision to fire Click.

"It was in the best interest of the university," Foley said in a conference call with reporters this afternoon.

Click has the right to appeal.

In her written response to the investigative report, Click says it "omits a number of crucial descriptions and events that give context to my actions at both" the Homecoming parade and the protests on Nov. 9 at Mizzou. The report does not accurately describe characterize the precarious environment of the Homecoming Parade, she wrote, and because it draws only from one brief, edited video of the day it provides a limited description of these tense moments.

"While some would judge me by a short portion of videotape, I do not think that this is a fair way to evaluate these events," she said. "Those videotaped moments (for which I have formally and publicly apologized) deserve to be understood in a wider frame of reference, among all of the momentous events of the fall semester."

EDITOR’S NOTE: One less uber-liberal prof at U Mo. She’ll probably end up at that Marxist bastion, UC Berkeley. If this had happened in Berkeley, instead of being fired, Click would have been promoted.