Seeking to Lay Off Tenured Professors, Catholic U. Provost Blasts Critics for ‘Spreading Half-Truths and Fear’

In a fiery treatise on Monday, the provost of Catholic University of America (DC) rejected what he described as a faculty committee’s attempt to "mutilate" and "neuter" a layoff plan that some professors describe as a threat to the institution of tenure. He also condemned the plan’s toughest critics, whom he accused of "spreading half-truths and fear" instead of collaborating on a cost-cutting proposal. The provost says the layoffs are needed to close a $3.5-million budget deficit that came about in part from enrollment declines.