Faculty, administration, HR, DEI battle breaks out at Trinity College. File dispute in “problematic category,” two deans declare.

Inside Higher Ed reports on an extended conflict at Trinity College that began with complaints in the school’s engineering department, furtive bullying by two deans armed with a sealed envelope, an intervention by the school ombuds, followed by meetings of the Academic Freedom Committee, and action by the Board of Trustees and college president. To summarize, administrators have made a complicated mess with collateral resentments and grievances litter the leafy campus.

Reporter Ryan Quinn explains the web of actions and conflicts at the elite liberal arts college with the help of documents he obtained and conversations with the early target of the administration, engineering professor John Mertens.

Henry Kissinger, who served on the Harvard faculty before joining President Richard Nixon’s administration at its start in 1969, famously observed, The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small.” The conflict at Trinity sounds like a right royal brawl with nothing accomplished other than a guarantee of future fights.

Published August 17, 2023.