Alejandro Zaera-Polo has been removed from his faculty position as Princeton continues its row with the former SoA dean – Archinect

Princeton and former School of Architecture Dean Alejandro Zaera-Polo are officially cutting ties as the 57-year-old has been formally dismissed from his faculty position following a unanimous vote by an Ad-Hoc committee of the universitys board of trustees this summer.

Zaera-Polo served as Dean of Princeton's School of Architecturefor a brief period from 2012 until 2014, when he resigned following allegations of plagiarismthat eventually led to a defamation lawsuit brought by Zaera-Polo against the university, which then made an unsuccessful attempt to dismiss the four-part claim against itself and President Christopher Eisgruber.

Zaera-Polo had continued on as a faculty member despite the surrounding controversy.

In response to his dismissal, Zaera-Polo has issued a 5-hour Gonzo-style polemic against the university in which the AZPML founder touches on various topics including Interpretation Trumps Evidence, Identity Politics, and The Post-truth University. The Spanish architect has also made an 813-page accounting of his evidence available to the public in the hopes of making his case more transparent.

The "seminar" consists of seven sessions with an overall duration of 4.5 hours: Introduction (above), Identity Politics, Academic Freedom?, Power and Knowledge, The Post-truth University, Interpretation Trumps Evidence, and Speaking Truth to Power.

Through this process, I have gradually elevated the controversy about academic freedom, the ideological imposition onto my thesis supervision activities, the blockage to the free association between students and advisors and the illegitimate allocation of credit up to the Board of Trustees, triggering various collateral processes which I have also meticulously recorded, Zaera-Polo said in an email statement.

He continued: What emerges from my investigation is a disturbing picture of Princeton as a structure of layers formed by opaque committees that cover up and exonerate each other with the ultimate aim of protecting the authorities, at the expense of truth, the rules, and academic freedom.

Zaera-Polo shared the following statement with select individuals and press:

For those of you who do not know Princeton, probably the two first sessions and the last one will be probably sufficient to understand the facts. Those of you who know Princeton university or the School of Architecture may enjoy listening to the details of the intermediate sections.

Through this process, I have gradually elevated the controversy about academic freedom, the ideological imposition onto my thesis supervision activities, the blockage to the free association between students and advisors and the illegitimate allocation of credit up to the Board of Trustees, triggering various collateral processes which I have also meticulously recorded.

What emerges from my investigation is a disturbing picture of Princeton as a structure of layers formed by opaque committees that cover up and exonerate each other with the ultimate aim of protecting the authorities, at the expense of truth, the rules, and academic freedom.

The entire process records not only the deceitful behavior of Monica Ponce de Leon, Elizabeth Diller and other members of the faculty at the SoA, but a multitude of administrators and academics throughout the university, acting as pawns of authority, operating unanimously but refusing to argue their decisions publicly and in writing. They regularly lie, incur in conflicts of interest, rewrite rules ad hoc, conceal evidence, falsify records, certify false evidence, create scapegoats, stereotype, impose codes of silence, retaliate, coerce students and do whatever it takes to exonerate academic authority in its most autocratic forms.

Regardless of the future legal implications of these processes, what is most relevant now is to make this evidence available as widely as possible, so feel free to share its content with whoever you think may be interested in this evidence, post it online and in print. The purpose of this communication is to shed light onto the obscure processes which characterize not only the School of Architecture in Princeton, but also the highest echelons of the university.

The processes exemplify the implications of the post-truth culture and the imposition of a relativist ideology which leads to the prevalence of political interests over genuine academic concerns, interpretation over evidence, and the abuse of identity politics and political correctness within the contemporary academia.

I would recommend you to download these materials and save them, as their public availability may be challenged in the future by some of the agents involved.

Originally posted here:

Alejandro Zaera-Polo has been removed from his faculty position as Princeton continues its row with the former SoA dean - Archinect