Yesterday a story that I have been following for some time finally broke so I am able to talk about it. My friend and colleague (via the Translation Awards), Rob Latham, has been fired from his job as a tenured professor at the University of California Riverside. His dismissal was against the recommendation of the UCR Faculty Senate, and is based primarily on charges which almost everyone involved appears to agree were fabricated.

Obviously I only have Rob’s side of the story, which you can read here. However, even if the charges are true, they are considerably less serious than things that straight professors just get a rap on the knuckles for.

The point here is that Rob is by no means the only person to be a victim of this sort of thing. It used to be the case that you could be fired just for being gay. In many parts of the US you can still be fired just for being trans. These days we are supposed to have employment protection. All that means is that now your employers have to go through the effort of creating trumped up charges of misconduct as an excuse for firing you.

There are many reasons why I am self-employed. This is one of them.