UNR looks at firing Hussein
Tuesday, Mar. 18, 2008 @ 6:19 pm
A special hearing committee will make its recommendation to University of Nevada, Reno President Milton Glick by April 7 on whether professor Hussein S. Hussein should keep his job or face other other sanctions.
In its second attempt to fire Hussein, the university is arguing that the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources researcher plagiarized students’ work and misused donated money.
During Tuesday’s closing arguments, Hussein’s lawyer Jeffery Dickerson said Hussein violated no policies when it came to using money given to him from companies he was doing research for.
And even he did, there was no way for him to know, Dickerson said.
“He never received a warning,” Dickerson said. “He’s a tenured professor!”
The university also says Hussein sent research done by graduate students to the Iams Corportion without including their names. Dickerson said those students were ultimately given credit for their work.
Hussein denies the allegations. He says the university administration and lawyers want any reason to remove him.
“They want to get me fired yesterday, that is the whole idea,” Hussein said.
Hussein has filed a dozen lawsuits against officials in the Nevada System of Higher Education since 2005. He alleges favoritism and embezzlement from members of his college. He also says officials in the university have waged a war of retaliation against him since he reported animal care violations to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2004.
University lawyers and officials said they couldn’t talk about the hearing or give out the documented allegations against Hussein because it is a personnel matter. But the employee can talk about the complaint all he or she wants, said Jane Tors, University of Nevada, Reno spokeswoman.
“Clearly in this case, (Hussein) has chosen to make the process public,” she said.
Hussein said the most recent alleged violations are baseless. He said the alleged plagiarism stems from when he sent unpublished research to colleagues for review without crediting the graduate students.
Everyone was properly credited when the work was published, he said.
He said the allegedly misused donations were unspecified gifts and could be used for any of his research projects. Because the money came in gifts, it wasn’t subject to university overhead costs, he said.
“They’re trying to redefine the money so they can put me in jail,” Hussein said.
He drew parallels to his 2005 hearing, where he was accused of damaging university property by having an outside veterinarian examine frothing, sickly animals. The veterinarian took fecal and blood samples from two pigs.
The 2005 hearing panel found him innocent, which then-UNR president John Lilley validated.
Link to the NSHE code used to fire tenured professors.
Editor in chief Brian Duggan contributed to this story.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Administration, Breaking News, News.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Print this post
Email this post
© 2008 The Nevada Sagebrush
