Update: There are many more reasons for Mizzou to dump Click — and they are all dollar signs. Mizzou’s interim chancellor had to send out a letter warning the Mizzou community of a $32 million budget shortfall, thanks to a stampede away from the campus:

The fallout from the fake Mizzou protests continues to destabilize the University of Missouri. Today the interim chancellor of the university emailed students that the university will enroll 1500 less students than projected and faces a budget shortfall of $32 million this year.

While the 1500 fewer students aren’t broken out by year, the vast majority of them will come from the entering freshman class. How substantial is the decline in enrollment? Based on Mizzou admission data from past years we’re talking about a potential 20% drop in enrolled freshmen.

Original post follows:

No one expected Melissa Click to go quietly into that good night, did they? Rage, rage against the dying of … the 50 Shades of Grey sinecure, or something. Fired from her job at the University of Missouri after attempting to strong-arm student journalists on public property, Click has filed an appeal that accuses Mizzou of surrendering to her conservative critics.

NTTAWWT, of course:

A former University of Missouri assistant communications professor is appealing her firing last month over her role last year in a race-related student protest, suggesting that her ouster was political.

Melissa Click, in a statement Tuesday, insisted her Feb. 25 dismissal by the university system’s governing curators was unfair by failing to follow the normal, on-campus procedures for reacting to faculty misconduct. More than 100 state lawmakers, mostly Republican, had called for her removal.

“In their decision to terminate my employment, the curators bowed to conservative voices that seek to tarnish my stellar 12-year record at MU,” Click wrote. “Instead of disciplining me for conduct that does not ‘meet expectations for a university faculty member,’ the curators are punishing me for standing with students who have drawn attention to the issue of overt racism at the University of Missouri.”

Click, whose firing followed her suspension in January, added that the governing board “is using me as a scapegoat to distract from larger campus issues, but their termination of my employment will not remedy the environment of injustice that persists at MU.”

Click may not find herself alone in her quest to regain her taxpayer-funded paycheck. The New York Daily News reports that an outside group wants to pursue an investigation of their own into Click’s dismissal:

Click’s statement came a day after the American Association of University Professors announced that three members would visit the Columbia campus later this month to investigate the process leading to Click’s firing and whether it violated her right to due process and “whether conditions for academic freedom and tenure at the institution are sound.”

Click’s supporters have questioned the curators’ move, by a 4-2 vote, to decide Click’s fate rather than allowing the school to use its normal, on-campus procedures for reacting to faculty misconduct.

“The AAUP’s action underscores my belief that the curators have overstepped their authority,” Click said Tuesday.

Click’s attempting a double-sleight-of-hand move with these claims. She wants to either cast her firing as an attempt by Mizzou’s administrators to bury racism, or at the very least an abuse of power. The latter is especially ironic, since the action that prompted Click’s firing was itself an abuse of power in trying to deny access to public property, and then trying to use force to back up her illegitimate arrogation of power.

As for the racism claims, it’s worth a peek at Click’s picture on the front page to calculate her victimization in that regard. This argument is not just nonsensical, it’s explicitly patronizing. If there are victims of racism at Mizzou, then they can certainly speak for themselves without having Click as their mouthpiece. In fact, Concerned Students 1950 was actually doing an effective job of representing their grievances until Click herself hijacked the protests and distracted attention away from the issue and making herself the center of attention — which she is still doing to this day.

Regardless of whatever the AAUP decides, Mizzou has the authority to dismiss a non-tenured professor for cause, and assault and attempted battery make for a pretty solid cause. The rest of this is sheer nonsense from a self-entitled martinet, which seems par for the course thus far at Mizzou.