The University of Mississippi has placed its ombudsman, Paul J. Caffera, on administrative leave and is seeking a temporary replacement after he sued to stop the university from compelling him to share confidential information about faculty, staff and graduate students who have privately confided to his office about issues on campus.
During a period of what University of Mississippi faculty are calling a time of increasing paranoia, the university is set to terminate a celebrated professor of history—the outspoken anti-racism and decarceral scholar, Dr. Garrett Felber.
University of Mississippi administration has spent much of 2020 performing damage control in one way or another. The Mississippi Free Press obtained a copy of a recent UM climate study that it was closely guarding. Here’s what it says.
Days after the Mississippi Free Press first reported on emails involving a University of Mississippi dean that included remarks disparaging to Black women students and a famous gay alum, UM Provost Noel Wilkin denounced the remarks in a YouTube video.
UM Emails Part II: In late 2018, a number of University of Mississippi officials struggled to strike a balance between empathizing with aggrieved wealthy white donors who clung to the Ole Miss of yore and responding to a UM faculty and student body that, overall, felt the school was not moving fast enough into the future.
The Confederate soldier could get the last laugh in his new home at the University of Mississippi. Under UM’s Master Plan, he could be adjacent to a new Tad Smith Mall, with the statue’s walkway feeding into what is slated to be called the “New Grove.”
University of Mississippi alumnus and long-time donor Jim Barksdale reached out to the Mississippi Free Press Friday, July 10, to clarify his involvement in fundraising efforts for the Confederate monument relocation and controversial cemetery-enhancement vision one critic called a “CSA statuary.”
“They have pulled a fast one here,” the source told the Mississippi Free Press. “They pretended to surrender the position of the monument when they are, in fact, putting it in a (more prominent) place.”
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