Johns Hopkins Fires Professor for Defending Research Computer from Occupying Student Protesters

(p. A10) Shortly after midnight on May 8, [2019] a man slipped into an administration building at Johns Hopkins University with a pair of bolt cutters. In a dark stairwell, he got to work, sweating through his shirt as he struggled to cut through the metal chains attached to a first-floor door.

The man was a professor at the university, and he was trying to wrest the building from student protesters who had occupied it for more than a month. Before long, the students ejected the professor, Daniel Povey, 43, from the building.

This week, Johns Hopkins kicked him off the faculty, too.

. . .

Mr. Povey wrote on his website that the students had scratched him as they took him out of the building. He also wrote that he faced more serious consequences than the students — who he noted had also entered the building without permission — because Johns Hopkins feared being accused of racism. He said he had tried to take the building back from the students in part because a computer server that hosted his research was inside and malfunctioning.

For the full story, see:

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs. “Professor Tried To Forcibly End Student Sit-In. Now He’s Gone.” The New York Times (Monday, August 12, 2019): A10.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 11, 2019, and has the title “A Professor Tried to End a Sit-In With Bolt Cutters. Now He’s Been Fired.”)

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