Yesterday, in Los Angeles, IVC President Raghu P. Mathur was deposed by attorney Carol Sobel in connection with IVC philosophy professor Roy Bauer’s First Amendment lawsuit against Chancellor Cedric Sampson, who, in December, without warning, and in violation of the faculty contract and board regulations requiring fairness and due process, placed a reprimand in Bauer’s personnel file accusing him, preposterously, of violations of district “discrimination” and “workplace violence” regulations and, even more preposterously, ordered him to seek counseling.
(At that point, Bauer had been a petitioner in two successful “Brown Act” lawsuits against the Board and had been the editor of two “underground” newsletters that routinely criticized the Board Majority, IVC President Raghu P. Mathur, and the corrupt Old Guard union group that put them all in power.)
Soon thereafter, U.S. Judge Nora Manella characterized the “counseling” order as “Orwellian” and, in a preliminary injunction, judged the six elements of Bauer’s newsletters cited by the Chancellor to be constitutionally protected free speech.
On Monday, Judge Feess of the Federal Court is scheduled to consider a “summary judgment,” which, if granted, would obviate a trial.
Mathur has publicly criticized Bauer, among other IVC faculty, even suggesting that Bauer and other members of a supposed nefarious “core group” have sent him “mail threats” and threatening voicemail messages. Mathur has never offered any evidence that he has received these threats.
During his deposition last summer, Chancellor Sampson acknowledged that he had failed ever to ask for such evidence when Mathur reported the threats to him, thereby revealing a disturbing degree of stupidity and incompetence.
During yesterday’s deposition, Mathur, who often seemed to have trouble understanding Sobel’s questions, referred to as many as seven or eight “threats” against him. When asked whether he kept any of the alleged threatening letters, email messages, and voicemail messages, he indicated that he had not. Further, when questioned regarding the timing of the threats, he began to speak of events occurring as long ago as 1990, many years before his tumultuous and disastrous tenure as IVC president, which began with an illegal board action in 1997.
When asked to describe the content of one email message, Mathur explained that it was so disgusting that he could not repeat it. When pressed, he said he could not remember its content, for he is unaccustomed to the language it used.
At one point, he described a threatening voicemail message in which the voice was “altered.” When pressed for details, he indicated that it was a “medium” voice.
Bauer’s ‘Vine/Dissent has reported various Nixonian episodes, including one in which Mathur offered then-President Dan Larios a list of troublesome faculty—an enemies list. During the deposition, Mathur protested that Bauer got this episode wrong. He seemed to suggest that the Chancellor (Lombardi?) instructed Mathur to prepare such a list and provide it to Larios.
(I know. Go ask Lombardi!)
During the summer of 1998, Mathur had tried to pursue an alleged student complaint against Bauer, who has no history of student complaints. (Evidently, Mathur was inspired to launch this investigation, not by an actual student complaint, but, rather, by a rumor of a complaint that had been passed on to him by an instructor during a one-minute conversation.) In the course of questioning regarding that episode, Mathur acknowledged that he keeps what amounts to personnel files in his office, files evidently distinct from the official personnel files kept at the district, which are available to faculty for inspection upon request and which are subject to district regulations and contract language. Sobel was surprised to learn that a “report” on Bauer is being kept in Mathur’s office. When asked whether he has ever shown the report to Bauer, Mathur answered, “No.”
