Dean who settled case with Cincinnati Law lands visiting prof spot at Penn State
Jennifer Bard. Photo courtesy of Penn State University.
Jennifer S. Bard, the former dean of the University of Cincinnati College of Law who settled her due process and First Amendment retaliation action with the school in May, is joining the law and medical faculties at Penn State University as a visiting professor for the 2017-18 academic year.
Bard will work to build interaction between the two faculties. She’ll also teach health law, and deliver guest lectures, workshops and seminars at the medical school, according to a press release.
“This is an exciting year for health law and it’s a pleasure to be part of the national conversation while at a law school and medical school whose students and faculties are in the forefront of policy change and innovation,” Bard said in the release.
A Yale Law School graduate who also has a master’s degree in public health and a Ph.D. in higher education, Bard was the first woman to serve as Cincinnati’s law school dean. She held the position from July 2015 to last March.
In Bard’s federal complaint (PDF), filed in April the Southern District of Ohio, she alleged that a group of law professors, most of whom held endowed chairs, threatened to take a no-confidence vote about her to the press. The alleged threat reportedly followed a November 2016 meeting, where Bard disclosed that the law school’s operating funds were being used to pay salary supplements for the endowed professorships.
Endowments are supposed to fully cover the additional pay, according to Bard’s court filing. She claims that a specific job responsibility as dean of the law school was to reduce its deficit.
“The concerns of faculty reflected ordinary tensions between faculty and administration. Some of the concerns were entirely self-serving, and many were based on inaccurate information and fears about anticipated conduct,” the complaint reads.
According to Bard, there was an agreement to bring in a mediator, who would address the work she was hired to do, coupled with faculty concerns. Her complaint alleges that the university’s interim provost delayed contacting a mediator, and it described a proposed six-month plan as a way to force the law school dean out, rather than improve her communication with faculty.
Following a Cincinnati Business Courier article on March 19 about the law school, Bard provided the paper with additional information, and it ran a a follow-up piece two days later.The university placed Bard on involuntary administrative leave on March 22.
Under terms of a settlement reached on May 8, Bard agreed to withdraw her constitutional rights and breach of contract claims against the school in exchange for two years of academic leave, a tenured professor spot at the law school and a secondary appointment at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, according to a press release (PDF) from the law firm that represented her. It also stated that Bard would retain her full salary as dean—reported to be $300,000 a year—while she held the positions as professor.
Verna Williams, a constitutional law professor who also co-directs Cincinnati Law’s Center for Race, Gender and Social Justice, is the school’s interim dean.
