As a *71 graduate alumnus of the electrical engineering department, I feel gratitude and great respect for my alma mater. This is what led me to endow a scholarship in the department of my graduate studies that has been supporting worthy graduate students for several years. However, I am greatly disappointed by the dismissal process of Professor Sergio Verdú (On the Campus, Oct. 24).
After what amounted to a trial by lynch mob through press articles and town hall meetings, and after bypassing the fundamental need for due process and for “audiatur et altera pars” [let the other side be heard], the University committed a gross injustice by dismissing from its faculty the most prominent information theorist in the world today without affording him the chance to publicly counter the allegations against him. I am astounded by the unfairness with which the University treated one of its most prominent faculty members. Sexual harassment is reprehensible, but casual surrender to uninformed public pressure is equally reprehensible.
As a *71 graduate alumnus of the electrical engineering department, I feel gratitude and great respect for my alma mater. This is what led me to endow a scholarship in the department of my graduate studies that has been supporting worthy graduate students for several years. However, I am greatly disappointed by the dismissal process of Professor Sergio Verdú (On the Campus, Oct. 24).
After what amounted to a trial by lynch mob through press articles and town hall meetings, and after bypassing the fundamental need for due process and for “audiatur et altera pars” [let the other side be heard], the University committed a gross injustice by dismissing from its faculty the most prominent information theorist in the world today without affording him the chance to publicly counter the allegations against him. I am astounded by the unfairness with which the University treated one of its most prominent faculty members. Sexual harassment is reprehensible, but casual surrender to uninformed public pressure is equally reprehensible.