A professor at a Florida university who was fired for saying “black privilege is real” in a Twitter post is being reinstated with back pay after filing a successful complaint.
University of Central Florida (UCF) professor Charles Negy made the controversial comments on his personal Twitter account following the overdose death of violent felon and drug addict George Floyd in 2020, which made him the target of campus cancel culture.
“If Afr. Americans as a group, had the same behavioral profile as Asian Americans (on average, performing the best academically, having the highest income, committing the lowest crime, etc.), would we still be proclaiming ‘systematic racism’ exists?” Nagy said in one of the offending tweets.
“Black privilege is real: Besides affirm. action, special scholarships and other set asides, being shielded from legitimate criticism is a privilege. But as a group, they’re missing out on much needed feedback,” he added.
This caused the woke mob to demand Nagy’s dismissal, and UCF caved in an extreme example of extreme cowardice and refusal to defend academic freedom.
Negy, as a union member, brought UCF into arbitration hearings. The arbitrator issued Negy his Arbitration Award as of May 16, 2022. He will be reinstated with tenure and his back pay in a major rebuke of cultural Marxism.
“The facts persuasive are that we have a professor of some 18 years tenured with consistently outstanding annual evaluations, with three TIP awards, recipient of a special pay adjustment successfully designed to persuade him not to leave UCF. There is no evidence that UCF gave him reason to believe he was anything but as highly esteemed as his evaluations and treatment, with no reason to perform differently,” the arbitrator found.
Additionally, the arbitrator found that the investigation into Hagy’s supposed misconduct was a glorified fishing expedition designed to satisfy the blood lust of the social justice jackals on campus.
“Management cannot escape its obligation to clearly communicate its requirements. It must also be clear in what it communicates about performance. It does no justice to claim it made enormous evaluations errors for 20-plus years and then castigate the employee with termination,” the arbitrator stated.
Hagy told Legal Insurrection that he is disgusted at the behavior of the UCF administrators for their lack of willingness to defend their core institutional values.
“The fact that a university would pursue a pretextual investigation with a foregone conclusion to fire a tenured professor because the professor does not conform to “diversity/equity/inclusion” (DEI) ideology is — pretty disgusting in my opinion. University of Central Florida (UCF) investigated my entire 22 year career with them in search of something–anything–that they believed they could use to justify their firing of me,” he said.
“Today, after a year and a half of grieving this with the assistance of the United Faculty of Florida’s Union-appointed attorney (H.B. Stiver of Tallahassee, Florida), I learned that I’ve been fully reinstated in my job with full back-pay and benefits. I do anticipate that I will file a lawsuit against UCF really soon. UCF Administrators (and all university administrators) need to get the message that they cannot simply “purge” or even discipline professors who do not conform to the DEI ideology that they are imposing on entire university campuses,” Hagy added.
This is why it is always important to fight back against the woke mob and their enablers. They want their opposition to fold under the pressure. These subversive interests must be confronted and destroyed. Hagy’s reinstatement is a major victory for truth and freedom.