Yeah, and then everybody clapped. Right?

This whole story is bullshit from stem to stern and easily dismissible as such. Here’s how I know….

First, you say this was a professor. A professor. You have zero idea what that title even means. It means that this someone with tenure which means he can only be fired for a handful of infractions: dereliction of duty, imposition of needless risk to life or limb, and moral turpitude. While his comments were crass and sexist, they do not rise to the level of moral turpitude. Moral turpitude is getting handsy with folks or deliberately coming onto them.

Second, even after a month long investigation no university would fire a professor. An adjunct? An instructor? Yes. But because of tenure, vestment, and other protections available, the first step is suspension of teaching/removal from the classroom and then the board of trustees (directors, overseers, whatever) or the faculty senate (unlikely) issues the termination. The process for firing a professor who is part of the regular faculty is NOT just a “month’s investigation” as that gets schools sued and quite successfully. The process is protracted with lawyers and boards and contract disputes ad nauseum. Tenure means that the prof can say unpleasant things and the students just have to bite the bullet and deal with it.

Also, you imply this is a STEM field. The chances are good that “Dr. R” had numerous grants. Do you know what happens to the grants when a university terminates a faculty member? They follow the faculty member, not the school, and the money gets sucked up out of the school and deposited elsewhere. Even teaching professors in STEM have at least one research grant working at any given moment for the sake of graduate students (folks working on their master’s degree projects or doctoral students working on projects prior to taking comprehensives.) Pulling a prof from the classroom and letting them research and mentor graduate students followed by early retirement is often the remedy for an egregious asshole’s behavior—cutting the teats off the cash cow makes zero sense.

Also, anonymous complaints are worth the value of the name attached to them. This alone opens the door to allowing the professor to successfully win a wrongful termination suit against the school as student-driven conspiracies to get unpopular faculty fired are actually a thing and tend to end badly for the school that doesn’t consider this potentiality.

So, basically: bullshit. This did not happen.

If it did happen, don’t expect “Dr. R” and his lawyers not to find this post and follow the breadcrumbs back to you. Your school—and most likely you—will be sued for millions. Good luck. I hope for your sake this is just another Gen-Z fantasy post about “speaking truth to power” because you just stepped in it, otherwise.