A thirty-one-year tenured professor at the United States Naval Academy was recently fired for “unprofessional conduct” which, Annapolis officials claim, includes “touching students without their consent and emailing them photos of himself partially clothed.”
According to The Washington Post, Professor Bruce Fleming denies the charges and calls them part of a “revenge campaign” against him for being a long-time critic of various Academy policies.
“I do NOT apologize,” Fleming wrote in an email Friday. “Nothing I did was inappropriate.”
Fleming alleges he was denied due process rights and plans to appeal his termination.
The professor officially was relieved on August 15 with the Academy citing “episodes in which the professor referred to some students as ‘right-wing extremists,’ touched students during class without consent and sent students photos of himself without a shirt after being told that such communication was wrong.”
Fleming’s lawyer Jason H. Ehrenberg said his client’s actions “were meant to engage students in the classroom” and he provided documents to the Post in which Fleming defends himself. The professor denies he called any student a “right-wing extremist,” but noted it would be “within his rights” if he did — “especially as a joke.”
Regarding physical contact with students, Fleming told The Post: “I hug a lot of students and they hug me. I am comfortable with them and they with me.” At a school that prizes physical education, he said, he made it a point to do one-armed pushups for the class. “Talking about and showing physicality is a way to bond with [students] AND part of our official mission,” he wrote. He also said that he would on occasion pat a student on the shoulder but that nothing was out of bounds.
Regarding shirtless pictures, Fleming said that he had worked as a model some years ago and has a number of posed photos that show his torso. A few years ago, he said, he shared one with male students to make a point about body imagery in a poem. He said a superior told him not to do that again. Within the past year, he acknowledged, he sent a “partial ‘flex’ shot” — not a full torso — as a “meme” to students “without thinking about it.” He said that it showed “about 1/8 of my body with a flexed arm” and that he often uses the term “flex” in class to refer to a topic sentence.
One thing which Fleming has criticized over his years is Academy admissions policy. In a Federalist piece from last October, Fleming wrote that the US service academies were “now the vanity projects of the military brass” and that Annapolis students “are not as strong as the ‘best and brightest'” image that’s portrayed.
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