A Professor's Death, and Hard Truths

In an unusual public statement, Emerson College’s (MA) president said this week that a professor who was recently found dead had been suspended for the fall semester for sexual harassment.  Administrators must often weigh personnel, student and institutional privacy concerns against the public interest. In many cases, this approach results in college leaders saying relatively little about punishments and reasons behind them in harassment cases. In this case, President M. Lee Pelton appeared to want to set the record straight about Emerson’s actions regarding Robert Todd, the late professor of visual and media arts.