An Unfair Process

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.