Keith Fink has been publicly identified as a "conservative professor" teaching at the University of California at Los Angeles. Kathryn Arnold of Campus Reform published this article describing the troubling treatment he has received, ostensibly as part of a routine personnel review:

http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9208

According to Ms. Arnold's report, the process calls for Dr. Fink to flag potential conflicts of interest in his reviewers. He alerted the University to bias in several of the people who have been placed on his review. These alerts have not resulted in recusals, which would be a natural courtesy afforded to Dr. Fink given the suspicious details of his review. Below is an excerpt of the article by Ms. Arnold:

Ultimately, the review committee deadlocked on the question of Fink’s performance, turning in a split vote of 3-3-3 that necessitates a tie-breaking decision by Social Sciences Dean Laura Gomez.

As part of the excellence review process, Fink was required to submit a list of faculty whom he feels might have a bias against him, and he identified both Johnson and Gomez as potentially hostile colleagues “who may [might] not provide objective evaluations.”

Fink outlines his objections to the review process in an exhaustive response to the dossier compiled by the department, which not only reproduces email exchanges between Fink and Johnson but also includes retorts to seven of the unfavorable written evaluations, none of which, Fink says, “credibly argue that I am not an ‘excellent’ teacher.”

Fink is particularly critical of Johnson, recalling that he had enjoyed a positive relationship with the previous department chair, but that his support within the department “inexplicably took a turn for the worse after the appointment of Kerri Johnson,” under whose leadership he alleges that “the department has done everything it can to rig the Excellence Review process against me.”

There is no requirement for faculty on such a “bias list” to be recused from the review committee, nor is there a formal process for the faculty member under review to request their recusal, allowing both to remain closely involved in deciding Fink’s fate as a UCLA professor.

Litt also pointed out that three of the faculty members who voted on the Excellence Review had been included on Fink's "bias list," suggesting that while the votes were cast in secret, it is not a coincidence that there were also three "no" votes."

More information about the case is available here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yxnizhv3svb100r/Candidate%27s%20Reply%20%28Media%20Redacted%29.pdf?dl=0

The author of this petition has documented similar abuses of the review and complaint system at CSU Northridge, another university in the same city, which has had to settle high-profile grievances by Marilyn Joshua Williams and Mark Armitage. The similarity in the bureaucratic abuses points to the high likelihood that Dr. Fink has been identified as a political outsider and is being railroaded to a pre-determined outcome, probably negative. It would be harmful for this gifted professor to find himself out of work in such an expensive city, and his departure from UCLA would add to the rapidly growing distrust of academia by conservatives. The recent cases of Carol Swain, John McAdams, Paul McHugh, Paul Griffiths, Anthony Esolen, and the author of this petition, warrant concerns that consistent abuse and banishment of conservatives from the academy may result in a backlash of epic proportions, which could harm many innocent and well-intended people in higher education. Persistent abuse of university resources to retaliate against and target one political party would occasion a rightful review of the IRS treatment of universities as tax-exempt non-profit institutions given shelter from corporate taxation by supposed service to the public good.

We respectfully ask Dean Laura Gomez to nullify the split vote from Dr. Fink's departmental review and refer this entire case to a trustworthy, unbiased third party, so that the public and especially California taxpayers can see clear evidence that academia is still trustworthy and not being abused by one political party at the expense of the public good.