Professor says helping disabled student gives unfair ‘advantage’
A college professor who contributed to a Nobel Prize-winning panel has been placed on leave after refusing to provide supplementary materials to a learning-disabled student, according to reports.
Michael Schlesinger, a University of Illinois educator, explicitly denied requests from a university employee to provide electronic lecture slides to the student in his class on climate and global change, The Daily Illini reported.
A professor in the Atmospheric Sciences department since 1989, Schlesinger told Rachel Graddy — a Division of Rehabilitation and Education Services disability specialist — in an email he did not want to “advantage” a student by providing lecture slides, according to the college newspaper.
Schlesinger confirmed the conversations — correspondence that he shared with his students — to Insider Higher Ed.
“It is you who have pressured me, who has taught and researched for 41 years in university and is a Nobel Prize recipient, to do that which I will not do, advantage a single [Disability Resources and Educational Services] student over the 100-plus non-DRES students in my course by providing that student with my lectures electronically,” he wrote to Graddy in one email.
Schlesinger — who was recognized for contributing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize — offered to pay class members who shared notes with the disabled student, who was not named in conversations made public.
The Daily Illini reported that a professor’s refusal to accommodate a disabled student could violate the American with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.
Schelisinger disputed reports that he resigned from his job, and maintained that he did nothing wrong.
“I have not resigned and do not tend to resign,” he told Insider High Ed via email. “Rather, I intend to fight for a more balanced approach to assisting disabled students, an approach that does not disadvantage non-disabled students.”
A university spokesman has not publicly commented on the issue on grounds that it is a personnel matter, but confirmed that Schlesinger currently is not teaching.
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