Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning and Jackson State University have reached a tentative agreement to settle the months-long federal lawsuit filed by a former faculty senate president who was placed on leave pending termination last fall. The settlement would give Dawn Bishop McLin her job back as a tenured professor.
McLin’s case is the latest in a series of lawsuits against the state’s college governing board and the historically Black university. Two others have cited gender discrimination when it comes to the board’s presidential search and its selection process.
The proposed agreement, which is still being hammered out by attorneys, would return McLin to her position as psychology professor. It would also restore the roughly $38,000 in research grants she lost after her termination, as well as $10,000 in pay for summer school courses she would have taught this semester, all totaling $48,000.
IHL attorney Pope Mallette also requested a motion for the settlement agreement to be closed to the public, which prompted U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate to question the move by the taxpayer-funded governing board.
“The court does not seal public money,” Wingate said in response to Mallette’s request.
The parties spent much of the morning in separate rooms discussing the settlement and hashing out attorney fees.
Last year a faculty panel reviewed the university’s basis for McLin’s termination and recommended she be reinstated to her job “as a tenured faculty member fully restored,” the original court filing states.
The exact circumstances of her termination weren’t released, but members of the faculty senate executive committee have said McLin was apparently placed on leave without any written warning and accused of harassment, malfeasance and “contumacious conduct,” a term stemming from IHL policies that means insubordination.
Marcus Thompson, who has since resigned as Jackson State University president, did not respond to the panel’s recommendation, putting McLin in a state of limbo, ultimately forcing her to resign.
McLin, who was elected as JSU’s faculty senate president in 2020, received support from the American Association of University Professors, a national organization that backs academic freedom, and fellow colleagues following her termination. Thompson ignored multiple letters from the professional organization.
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