Opinion ID: 2982559
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: External review letters

Text: Next, Plaintiff cannot show that the external review letters were products of retaliation. For these letters to assist Plaintiff, he must show that nondecisionmakers at the COP selected Plaintiffs external reviewers with the intent that those reviewers would report negatively about Plaintiff, perhaps because the external reviewers were biased against Plaintiff, or perhaps because they were invariably scathing in their assessments of others’ work. But there are simply too many weak links in this causal chain. Buerki and the other COP faculty members who had the responsibility of choosing external reviewers selected fifteen scholars. Only seven responded, and most of them wrote positively. In other words, Plaintiffs colleagues only managed to select three negative reviewers, at most, out of fifteen—hardly circumstantial evidence of retaliatory intent. Plaintiff asserts that the most negative external reviewers were personally biased against Plaintiff because of their association with Plaintiffs former colleague Dr. Craig Pedersen. But Plaintiff has not -20- No. 13-3029 produced any evidence, apart from his own speculation, that either the external reviewers were in fact biased, or that the COP faculty that selected them knew of this hypothetical bias. Furthermore, Plaintiff had the opportunity to select his own external reviewers, who presumably would have had positive things to say. Plaintiff passed up the chance to help himself. Finally, Plaintiff contends that the selection of reviewers violated University rules, since Plaintiff was not told who the reviewers were before they were selected. The University’s rules did not require this procedure; they only suggested it. The most scathing external review letters did nothing more than parrot the scathing reviews that Plaintiff had received internally from numerous sources over several years. Plaintiff cannot point to substantive or procedural issues showing that the external letters were intended by Plaintiffs colleagues to ensure that he did not receive tenure in retaliation for protected conduct.