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After 26 years in the classroom, a professor was pushed out. Was he a legitimate threat, or just tough?
Michael Jay Shively was rigorous — on that much, everyone agrees.
Over his 26-year career at Utah Valley University, the biology professor took pride in the anatomy courses he built and the hard work they required.
Students who made it through often credited Shively with their successful medical careers. He prepared them for the demands of urgent care or of the emergency room. Other students were less charmed by his deadly multiple-choice exams. The workload, they felt, was beyond reasonable.
He also butted heads with colleagues, including a junior faculty member in the department, who saw him as an imposing micromanager.
For a while, frustrations with Shively stayed dormant. Last year, they erupted. On March 25, 2019, Shively received a single-page letter from the president that listed six types of misconduct. The letter accused him of arbitrary and capricious course requirements and grading, and of violating the academic freedom of colleagues. The letter also accused him of intimidating and threatening students and employees.
That day, he was suspended and escorted from campus.
An investigation ensued. According to his family, Shively grew anxious and depressed. He felt investigators were withholding details that would enable him to defend himself.
Nearly five months after he was suspended, before a decision was announced, Shively died by suicide. He was 73. This February, his widow sued Utah Valley, claiming the investigation had caused Shively to suffer “a spiraling decline.” Utah Valley denies any responsibility for Shively’s death.
It’s impossible to know for sure why Shively took his own life. Mental-health experts stress that suicide never has a single cause. But the events preceding his death, and people’s differing interpretations of them, expose the gap between academic ideals and academic practice.
At Utah Valley, Shively’s case became a Rorschach test. With little detail into the initial allegations, a group of faculty members saw the shape of something that seemed wrong: a protracted investigation of a tenured professor without due process. They questioned why suspension was warranted and why Shively’s classroom practices were under scrutiny.
Academic freedom is an ideal treasured by professors, and universities vow to protect it. The classroom is the...