Prof. was suspended after questioning failing student’s PhD
The University of Manitoba didn’t issue Gabor Lukacs a cease and desist order, it’s president, David Barnard, didn’t warn him about his impending suspension and the student who Barnard accused Lukacs of harassing never even filed a complaint against him. That’s what a Manitoba labour tribunal heard from Lukac’s lawyer yesterday, reports the Winnipeg Free Press. Luckac’s is the 28-year-old math professor who was suspended for three-months without pay last year — on the president’s recommendation — after he lobbied against a dean’s decision to award a PhD to a student who had twice failed the exams required to graduate. The dean had accepted that the student could not pass the exams because of his disability — “extreme exam anxiety” — which Lukacs believed was an abuse of the rules. Barnard argued that a 2009 reprimand from the dean to stop talking about the student’s alleged medical condition should have been enough warning to Lukacs that he might be suspended. He also said that the university would not have suspended Lukacs had the professor not named the student and his medical condition in a lawsuit he filed to try and get the PhD overturned.
Read more Maclean’s On Campus news and commentary about the Gabor Lukacs case here.