On the night of the 2024 presidential election, Millsaps College religious studies professor James Bowley began receiving text messages from students about a series of posts on a social media site called Yik Yak. A student told him about one post that mentioned hanging people who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Many college students use the site, including students at the private Methodist college in Jackson, Mississippi. Bowley said students and other off-campus friends also reported seeing swastikas in the windows of one of the campus dorms.
The professor, who also served as the chair of the college’s religious studies department, was unsure whether any of the reports were true, but felt that the rumors could cause fear among students.
The morning after Donald Trump defeated Harris, at around 10 a.m., the tenured professor sent an email to the three students enrolled in his Abortion and Religions course, canceling the day’s class session with the subject line, “No class today.” The body of his email read simply: “need time to mourn and process this racist fascist country.”
One day later, Millsaps Interim Provost Stephanie Rolph called Bowley to inform him that he had been placed on administrative leave pending review for using his Millsaps email address to share his personal opinions with students. Bowley, who had been with the college for 23 years, was shocked.
“I had no idea why, and she said it was because of that email,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on Jan. 30.
Bowley filed a lawsuit against the university on Sept. 26, alleging that his termination was a breach of contract and of the college’s traditions “stretching back to its founding.” Bowley is suing for back pay, reinstatement, and other damages.
“I’m hoping to accomplish justice for myself, and I’m also hoping to make a point for academic freedom, which is the foundation of all education,” Bowley told the Mississippi Free Press on Oct. 17. “If there is no academic freedom, a professor can’t say things to a class of students really about anything. But if a professor can’t say historical facts to a class of students, then we are in the realm of censorship, which is exactly what happened to me.”
The religious studies professor said his email was in response to students’ fears about the campus climate and not a political commentary. All three students in the class were students of color.
“I didn’t say anything about Trump,” Bowley told the Mississippi Free Press in January. “And it wasn’t just about national politics. Of course, it was about that too, but it was also about the environment on campus at Millsaps.”
Questions About Policy Arise During Committee Hearing
Millsaps banned the professor from campus, denied him access to his university email and instructed him not to have contact with any students. After a month of no communication, Professor James Bowley filed a grievance. A Millsaps College Grievance Committee met on Dec. 17, 2024, to hear his case.
In its letter to Millsaps College President Frank Neville on Dec. 27, the grievance committee stated that neither Interim Provost Stephanie Rolph nor Director of Human Resources Melinda Barrow “could identify a specific policy that Dr. Bowley violated by using campus email to share personal opinions with his students.” They also noted that there was no policy in the faculty or staff handbook prohibiting the use of campus email to share personal opinions with students.
The panel, composed of university faculty members, recommended that Bowley be reinstated immediately, that Rolph issue him a formal apology, and that the professor be “compensated for the loss of income resulting from his removal from the winter study abroad course he had been scheduled to teach.”
The Grievance Committee also found confusion about how policies are applied to tenured professors. The body expressed concern about the process Rolph used to initially place Bowley on leave, indicating that the usual procedure was not followed.
“We can understand why the Interim Provost might have wanted to consult with the President
before placing Dr. Bowley on leave,” the letter said. “However, by doing so, the Interim Provost complicated, and perhaps compromised, the Grievance Procedure outlined in the Faculty Handbook. Specifically, the Interim Provost appears to have created a conflict of interest for the
President, whom the Faculty Handbook identifies as the arbitrator of Dr. Bowley’s grievance.”
The committee also wrote that the handbook did not provide clear guidance on distinguishing when offenses should be classified as personnel matters versus matters of academic freedom. It recommended that an ad hoc committee should clarify both the faculty and staff handbook.
“The Faculty Handbook also does not offer guidance on how to distinguish personnel matters from matters of academic freedom,” the letter continued. “This lack of clarity appears to expose tenured faculty to a disciplinary process a) not codified in the Faculty Handbook and thus open to perceptions of bias; b) subject to the sole discretion of the Provost or Interim Provost; and c) for which the faculty member has no recourse, since the Provost or Interim Provost can refuse to answer substantive questions pertaining to the grievance.”
Instead, the interim provost terminated Bowley on Jan. 14 for not clarifying that his views were not those of the college. The termination listed four other alleged offenses, including using a student worker to grade assignments and log attendance, as well as failure to meet certain college expectations for instructors.
No First Amendment Protections
As a private college, Millsaps is not bound by First Amendment protections. The faculty handbook states that “when speaking or writing as a citizen, the teacher is free from institutional censorship or discipline.” However, it also indicates that faculty should “indicate whether the views expressed are individual or those of the institution.”
Bowley spent much of the year fighting to have his job reinstated. He reached out to The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which penned a letter to the university president in support of him.
“The school is violating (its) own promise to protect free speech and expression,” FIRE Campus Rights Advocacy Senior Program Officer Haley Gluhanich told the Mississippi Free Press on Jan. 23.
FIRE said that Bowley should not have been terminated and that the university did not afford him due process.
“Our argument is that administrative leave is a punishment and you should not be punished before you have the opportunity to have a hearing,” Gluhanich said. “Then, once we found out that he was terminated, our stance is that you really can’t terminate someone or punish someone for an offense that you didn’t initially accuse them of, because how are they supposed to defend themselves against that accusation?”
Millsaps College refused requests for an interview on Bowley’s termination at that time.
“At Millsaps, we follow established policies that guide our review of personnel matters,” the university said in a statement to the Mississippi Free Press on Jan. 24. “For tenured faculty, we follow the guidance provided in the Millsaps College faculty handbook. Due to privacy and confidentiality reasons, we cannot go into details about individual personnel concerns.”
The Final Decision
The case garnered national attention, with Dr. James Bowley featured in a September article in the New York Times. Theologian and 2024 presidential candidate Dr. Cornel West mentioned the incident on his show “Truth Time.” A GoFundMe for the professor has raised over $12,000.
Bowley filed a second grievance regarding the added offenses for his termination on Jan. 21, and appealed the original reason to the college’s faculty grievance committee. Bowley said he received the findings of the second report on March 28, which again found in his favor.
“I won both grievance committee hearings,” Bowley said during his Oct. 17 interview with the Mississippi Free Press. “And then after the second one, the president said, ‘No, we reject the grievance committee report.’”
Bowley then appealed to the Millsaps Board of Trustees. The board sent him an email on Sept. 9 stating that “the trustees unanimously affirmed (his) dismissal and President Neville’s decision to uphold it.”
“The Board of Trustees in September ruled that they would back the president and rejected my appeal, so that was the end of the internal system at Millsaps,” Bowley said. “Even though I won every single internal appeal with the faculty Grievance Committee, the administration, just based on their own administrative and authoritarian power, decided to reject the committee’s (recommendation). I actually don’t know that that has ever happened before.”
Since Bowley filed the complaint, the Mississippi Free Press reached out to Millsaps again, requesting an interview. The college declined.
“Millsaps is aware of the lawsuit filed by our former employee,” Millsaps College’s Director of Communications & Community Engagement Joey Lee told the Mississippi Free Press by email on Oct. 20. “We will not go into details at this time, but we welcome the opportunity to tell the whole story and believe the facts of this matter will speak clearly during the court process ahead.”
Bowley is open to the idea of returning to the college and his students. He said he simply wants the college to be a safe space for public speech and open debate.
“This is a far cry from the Millsaps of the ‘60s and ‘70s, where people like T.W. Lewis and people like Don Fortenberry were out protesting loudly and representing Millsaps in some sense. They weren’t hiding their identification and they were protesting against racism,” Bowley said. “And now, instead of those kinds of protests, which really made a huge impact in Mississippi, Millsaps faculty are self-censoring and can’t say anything that they think that the administration won’t approve. So I am for academic freedom, and, of course, I am for justice for myself.”