UCF has fired a professor who drew national attention over the summer for tweets described as racist by students and alumni after a university investigation revealed “misconduct” in his classroom, including that he failed to report that a student told him she had been sexually assaulted by a teaching assistant.
The University of Central Florida said on Friday that Charles Negy, an associate professor of psychology, had been fired, the culmination of a probe spurred by hundreds of messages the school received, including some that said he subjected students to “discriminatory harassment” in the classroom. The action was not the result of Negy’s social media posts or classroom comments that were protected by his academic freedom, said Chad Binette, a university spokesman.
“We support the First Amendment rights of everyone in our campus community to freely express their opinions, even those that some find objectionable,” university leaders said in an unsigned statement provided by Binette. “We also value faculty members’ right to academic freedom to present subjects forthrightly and responsibly, even when those discussions involve comments that some consider offensive.”
The university notified Negy on Jan. 13 it intended to fire him but allowed him to submit a written response to the allegations before it made a final decision.
Negy said by phone on Friday that he plans to challenge the university’s actions through the faculty union and his private attorney. He described the investigation as “bogus.”
“The goal is to find justification to terminate me, all because I don’t completely worship the diversity, equity and inclusion ideology,” Negy said.
Negy, who had tenure, was not teaching classes this semester, Binette said. His termination is effective immediately. State records show he made $110,504 a year.
Negy wrote in a letter to Tosha Dupras, the interim dean of the College of Sciences, that the university had targeted him for his controversial views and said the action could have a chilling effect on other employees’ speech.
“Knowing that it could not fire me for those tweets, UCF has obviously gone to great lengths over the last seven months to try and find legitimate grounds for my termination,” Negy wrote. “I challenge you to find any UCF employee, yourself included, whose entire life could withstand the type of scrutiny mine has been put through in UCF’s attempt to justify getting rid of me because I have become a political liability.”
He generally disputed the allegations outlined in Dupras’ Jan. 13 letter explaining the university’s intent to fire him, including that he failed to report to the university that a student told him in 2014 she had been sexually assaulted by a teaching assistant. He said he didn’t realize at the time he was required to report the incident and that the former student’s description of his response to her complaint, that he had said something like “you need to be more conscientious when choosing friends,” was untrue.
Negy also said the university didn’t detail the findings of the investigation before interviewing him about the allegations and then accused him of lying when he didn’t remember correctly all of the incidents that were the subject of the complaints. He said that accusation that he provided false statements during the investigation was evidence the school was acting in “bad faith.”
“I am 60 years of age,” Negy wrote to Dupras. “I do not recall every single comment I’ve made in my classes over the 2005-2020 period encompassed by UCF’s investigation.”
But after considering the allegations detailed in the report and Negy’s response, the university decided to move forward with his firing, Binette wrote.
University employees “have a responsibility to not create a discriminatory hostile environment,” the school’s statement said, adding that “UCF is committed to a culture of inclusive excellence, and we do not tolerate discrimination against any students or employees.”
