Journalism group censures Morgan State for firing student newspaper adviser

by E Wayne Ross on July 27, 2009

Inside Higher Ed: The Press and Morgan State U.

At Morgan State University, the student newspaper’s adviser was respected by the student journalists and went to bat for them in fights with the administration. Now the adviser is out of a job — and a national journalism group is today censuring the university, saying that it got rid of Denise Brown for doing her job.

College Media Advisers, the national group that represents people like Brown, conducted an investigation of why her employment ended on June 30, gathering documents, interviewing some players in the situation, and offering to mediate a settlement (an offer that the university declined), and then today issuing a report with its censure decision on the university. The report calls Morgan State’s policies “legally questionable” and says that they denied student journalists the right of free expression and resulted in the unfair termination of Brown from her position.