Profs Firing Upheld

A deaf professor won't get his job back at the University of Oregon. Peter Quint taught ASL at the school until making a reference in front of a class to shooting students- even though several of the students who had heard his remark characterized it as harmless and provoked. But a federal judge has dismissed the case, dismissing Quint's claim that his remark was protected free speech, he ruled that Quint had no grounds to file the suit in the first place because, the judge said, there wasn't enough evidence that the students who had disrupted his class did so because of his disability. Quint could appeal. You can read the details of what happened here in a post we made back in July 2011.