A controversial University of Central Florida professor who came under fire two years ago for tweets that many students described as racist and was fired last year has won his job back after an independent arbitrator determined the school’s action violated its contract with the faculty union.
Charles Negy, an associate professor in the psychology department, will get his job back with back pay and benefits, according to a ruling signed this week by an arbitrator who heard arguments from the United Faculty of Florida and the university in the case.
UCF terminated Negy early last year after a university investigation found he created a “hostile” classroom environment, deterred students from filing complaints about his classroom conduct, failed to report that a student said in 2014 she had been sexually assaulted by one of his teaching assistants and provided false information during the probe.
The university stands by its earlier findings, spokesman Chad Binette wrote in a statement, but must abide by the arbitrator’s ruling.
Negy said in an interview Thursday he’s been told he’s slated to resume teaching classes this fall. Over the past year and a half since his firing, he’s applied for more than 20 faculty positions on other campuses and “got no response.” By soliciting complaints from students about his performance, UCF leaders “made it a point to publicly crush me,” Negy said.
“They have ruined my career, ruined my reputation and it’s hard to do research in psychology when others will not collaborate with you,” he said.
The university embarked on the investigation that resulted in Negy’s firing in 2020 after students and others complained about tweets from Negy they deemed racist.
His controversial comments included one tweet from June 2020 that read, “Sincere question: If Afr. Americans as a group, had the same behavioral profile as Asian Americans (on average, performing the best academically, having the highest income, committing the lowest crime, etc.), would we still be proclaiming ‘systematic racism’ exists?”
Throughout the summer of 2020, thousands of people signed online petitions calling for Negy’s firing, including one that received more than 28,000 signatures and also noted “perverse transphobia and sexism” on his Twitter account, describing the posts as “reprehensible.”
The petition also suggested Negy’s views had resulted in the maltreatment of students in his classroom.
More than 300 people were interviewed during the course of the investigation. University leaders stressed last year that they decided to fire Negy based on the findings of the probe, not the tweets, which they said were protected by the First Amendment.
But arbitrator Ben Falcigno, who heard the case, noted in a decision released earlier this week that Negy’s record at UCF “shows no detrimental evaluations at all,” and that he was rated “outstanding” during his last five evaluations. Additionally, he received an award intended to recognize teaching excellence and productivity, known as a TIP award, three times.
Though university leaders condemned Negy’s views in mid-2020, just one year prior, he received a pay increase of $11,514, an incentive intended to keep him at UCF after he received a job offer from a different school, that raised his salary to $107,000.
“We have a professor of some 18 years tenured with consistently outstanding annual evaluations, with three TIP awards, recipient of a special pay adjustment successfully designed to persuade him not to leave UCF,” Falcigno wrote. “There is no evidence that UCF gave him reason to believe he was anything but as highly esteemed as his evaluations and treatment, with no reason to perform differently.”
The arbitrator wrote that UCF failed to meet the requirements of the “just cause” provision spelled out in its faculty contract because it did not give Negy the opportunity to change his behavior or prove he was incapable of correcting the alleged problems.
“UCF made the basic mistake of acting as if management bore no responsibility,” Falcigno wrote. “Nor did it give consideration to the messages in the form of evaluations and rewards it sent year after year to validate Dr. Negy’s teaching, and now it wants to blame only him — with capital punishment — for what it retroactively sees as serious misconduct.”
Regarding the university’s allegation that Negy failed to report a sexual assault, Falcigno wrote that Negy’s account of events — that two female students told him a male teaching assistant made them feel uncomfortable as he sat next to them at a gathering but did not touch them physically — was “plausible.”
Negy also said that he made other university employees aware of the 2014 incident at the time and the university had not provided training about how to properly report such misconduct.
Binette in a statement this week said the school supports First Amendment rights for students and employees, as well as the principle of academic freedom for faculty members, and “we encourage the expression of diverse points of view in a civil manner.”
But university employees must “not impose their personal beliefs on students and we do not tolerate discrimination against any member of our campus community,” he added.
“UCF stands by the actions taken following a thorough investigation that found repeated misconduct in Professor Negy’s classroom, including imposing his views about religion, sex and race,” Binette said. “However, we are obligated to follow the arbitrator’s ruling.”
Negy said he has hired a private attorney in addition to the ones hired by the faculty union and plans to sue the university, though he declined to elaborate on the nature of the suit.
“I love teaching and I’ve done nothing wrong,” Negy said. “I can debate people with gusto. I can debate people on positions on social matters and as a professor, I have the constitutional right to do so without being bullied by university administrators.”
anmartin@orlandosentinel.com
