Prof defends music theory against white supremacist claims, then gets demoted. Now, he's suing.

[PeteS in CA]

Prof defends music theory against white supremacist claims, then gets demoted. Now, he's suing.

https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16824

A University of North Texas professor is suing the university after it retaliated against him for a symposium of articles published in the academic journal he co-founded.

The lawsuit alleges that the University of North Texas violated Timothy Jackson's First and Fourteenth Amendment rights by removing him from the academic journal he co-founded after publishing a symposium of articles some students and faculty found to be "racist."

The university's action stems from an incident in November 2019 in which Philip Ewell, a professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York delivered a speech entitled “Music Theory’s White Racial Frame” at the Society for Music Theory (SMT). Ewell then published a paper based on this talk, in which he describes himself as “a Black person - the only associate professor who self-identified as such in the 2018 SMT demographic report - but … a practitioner of what I call ‘white music theory.’”

The lawsuit states that “Ewell complained that “music theory is white” because whites account for 84.2% of the membership of the Society for Music Theory and 93.9% of the associate and full professors in music theory.”
...
 ... Jackson and the editorial staff of the journal he co-founded, the Journal of Schenkerian Studies at UNT,  created a plan to host a symposium in response to Ewell’s address and publication. The journal called on members of the Society for Music to write papers in response to this topic. The submissions were published on July 24, 2020, and included a variety of views including 15 pieces that were favorable toward Ewell, and several others that were critical.

Jackson’s letter was among the submissions. Jackson was critical of Ewell and accused him of misquoting Schenker’s writings in a way that “falsifies or misconstrues their meaning.”
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Five days after the symposium ... the SMT Executive Board issued a letter of condemnation stating that “the conception and execution of this symposium failed to meet the ethical, professional, and scholarly standards of our discipline. Some contributions violate our Society’s policies on harassment and ethics."

Graduate students at UNT also sent a statement to the university that called for the dissolution of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies and demanded that the school hold accountable anyone involved in the publication. ...
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After the Ad Hoc Panel issued its report, the UNT Provost Jennifer Cowley wrote a letter to Jackson instructing him to submit a plan to address the panel’s recommendations by December 18, according to the lawsuit. However, more than a week before this deadline, Benjamin Brand, the history, theory, and ethnomusicology division chair, removed Jackson from the journal and informed him that university funding for the journal and Center for Schenkerian Studies would be halted.

The lawsuit outlines four demands for judgment, including a request that the court declare the university and its administration to be in violation of Jackson's First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The second request is to prevent the members of the Board of Regents along with their employees from taking any adverse action against Jackson in response to his symposium. The third and fourth requests consist of awarding Jackson with damages authorized by the law, and other relief that the court deems proper.

Things are to the point that the SJW Cancel Crowd need to be smacked down repeatedly for their influence to be crushed. Facts don't matter to them; facts are something-or-other-ist.