The American Association of University Professors on Friday urged the University of Missouri to immediately rescind its notice of termination to Melissa Click, the assistant professor of communication who asked for “muscle” to remove a student journalist during protests on the flagship Columbia camps this fall. In its letter to Hank Foley, interim chancellor at Columbia, AAUP cited Click’s lack of due process and the irregular means by which the university system’s Board of Curators voted to fire her last week

“Beyond its evident lack of conformity with the regulations of the University of Missouri, an action to dismiss a faculty member with indefinite tenure or a probationary faculty member within the term of appointment absent demonstration of cause in an adjudicative hearing before an elected faculty body is an action fundamentally at odds with basic standards of academic due process,” Hans-Joerg Tiede, associate secretary of the AAUP’s department of tenure, academic freedom and governance, wrote on Click's behalf.