Kean Federation of Teachers asks Farahi to resign over charges

Dr. Eric W.A. Boehm wrote: In my fifth year at Kean, as an Assistant Professor of Microbiology, Dept. of Biology, I was denied tenure by Farahi. Note: I was the only faculty member, in my 2006 cohort of three, to get full unanimous support for reappointment from my tenured colleagues, for five consecutive years. I also had full support of the KFT faculty union. More importantly I had outstanding student and peer evaluations also for five consecutive years. I came to Kean with 14 publications in top peer reviewed scientific journals, and published an additional three while at Kean. My student research program is documented at www.eboehm.com (second page). My students and I even won two years in a row, first place in student poster presentation at the NJ Academy of Science. Furthermore, I wrote and was successfully awarded a $300,000 federal grant by the NSF, which went to equip our department at Kean with molecular instrumentation. Yet, despite all of this, the Kean administration, specifically the Dean, Provost and President, chose to ignore all of this. My crime? I strongly disagreed w/the administration regarding the break up of the biology department into two departments under two different schools, splitting our faculty in half. One pro-Farahi group (all untenured young faculty in fear of their jobs and promotion) and the rest of us. In response to my denial of tenure at Kean, I had 126 students write to the president on my behalf. I remember well Farahi's reaction to these letters of support during our final interview. Farahi said they counted for nothing because they came from "little people". I was stunned. This man is a disgrace to the academic community and should be sacked immediately. He is highly vindictive, rude, and a fraud in the deepest sense. And now, to find out that the man has published NOTHING, and yet is paid to the tune of 300K per year, to manage and objectively evaluate faculty for tenure and promotion, just makes me physically ill. Let us remember that Farahi received an 83% vote of no confidence by the faculty in 2010. Kean has become the laughing stock of NJ public education, as a result of the reckless actions taken by this individual. This is just another indication of how corporate management practices have poisoned academia.