Inside Higher Ed: Panel Says Not to Fire Idaho State Faculty Member
Idaho State University lacks sufficient evidence to justify the termination of a tenured professor charged with a pattern of abusive and disruptive behavior, a faculty panel ruled Friday. Habib Sadid, an engineering professor who has been at Idaho State for more than 20 years, was suspended and barred from campus in August. Sadid has challenged administrators publicly, and in 2005 he organized a no-confidence vote in the university’s former president, who later resigned amid protests about his compensation. The panel ruled 4:1 in favor of Sadid, and the lone vote against him came from a faculty member appointed to the panel by the university’s provost. In its ruling, the panel said due process had not been followed and they found “the absence of requried documentation disturbing.” The panel added, “After years of satisfactory evaluations, the short interval to termination without the opportunity for remediation was troubling to the majority, particularly in light of the fact that the recommendation to terminate was based on a claimed long-term pattern of behavior.” The panel’s findings are advisory, and the university’s president is still authorized to terminate Sadid, according to university rules.