A former law professor is suing the LSU System and Jack Weiss, Paul M. Hebert Law Center chancellor, after being denied tenure in April. Aberto Zuppi, International Law professor, filed a lawsuit July 29, claiming he was denied due process to receive tenure.The tenure committee unanimously recommend Zuppi for tenure in Fall 2007, according to the court document filed by Zuppi’s lawyer, Leonard Cardenas III.The document also cited the American Association of Law School’s standards stating faculty member recommendations should not be overturned, “except in rare cases and for compelling reasons.” The Law Center is a member of the AALS.Weiss recommended Zuppi be denied tenure after the faculty suggested Zuppi should be granted tenure.Zuppi was denied tenure, a status giving academic freedom to faculty without most risks of being fired, by the LSU System.”We don’t have any recorded explanation why he was denied tenure,” Cardenas said. Weiss said he would not comment on pending litigation, but in April he told the Law Center’s newspaper, The Civilian, he paid close attention to student evaluations of Zuppi.Weiss evaluated Zuppi’s entire teaching career at the Law Center and sat in on two class periods to observe Zuppi before making his recommendation, Weiss told The Civilian.Weiss declined to comment on his answers in The Civilian article.The Civilian staff writer Dominic Golemi, who wrote the article about Weiss, was in Zuppi’s class. Golemi said he thought Zuppi was a good teacher, but he did hear one consistent complaint — students could not understand his accent and follow him logically.Charles Zewe, System vice president of communication and external affairs, declined to comment on the lawsuit.Ray Lamonica supervises all legal matters involving the LSU system, Zewe said in an e-mail to The Daily Reveille. Lamonica also declined to comment on the lawsuit. Zuppi left the University in May. Weiss offered Zuppi a one year extension to teach, but Zuppi refused, Weiss told The Civilian. Before Zuppi’s departure there was controversy among Law Center faculty members about the chancellor’s decision. Seventeen tenured faculty members sent a petition to the chancellor expressing their disagreement with Weiss.”Such disregard for the collective judgment of the tenured faculty raises serious concerns about your relationship with the faculty,” the petition said.Faculty who signed the petition knew Zuppi for several years and voted to award him tenure. But Weiss, who was newly appointed after much controversy, did not know him or appreciate his work, Jim Bowers, law professor and faculty member who signed the petition said. There was controversy about Weiss’ qualifications as chancellor because he came out of practicing to the Law Center, Bowers explained.The tenure process includes a tenure committee, voted in by faculty members, who then appoint a subcommittee to research the faculty member and then vote to recommend the candidate be awarded tenure, Bowers explained.Cardenas said he will present evidence showing the chancellor was trying to eliminate the international law program to which Zuppi contributed much of his work at the Law Center. One of the Law Center’s defenses is students complained about Zuppi’s teaching, Cardenas said. But numerous students praised Zuppi’s teaching, and he was well liked by his students, Cardenas said.Records of the student evaluations from Spring 2007 show Zuppi only received an average ranking of a 3.1 and 3.0 for being an effective teacher in both his classes. The overall evaluations for his courses were a 3.5 and 2.7 out of a possible 5.0 ranking.One student review said, “He called on kids, just to pick on them and embarrass them.”Another student review said, “I really doubt this law school, with its failure to care about the major problem it has in teaching when they have to bring professors from other nations to teach Louisiana law.”  ”Having taken you previously, I noticed an improvement in your communications of the subject to students,” another student said in an evaluation.Grant Gulliot, who took Zuppi’s sales and real estate class and was pleased with his grade, said Zuppi was a well respected       professor, but his teaching style was drastically different from other civil law faculty. Gulliot said one of Zuppi’s flaws was that his tests only consisted of four or five questions that were very closely tied together.Law students are only given a final exam to test their knowledge from the entire semester, and these exams usually take four hours, Guillot explained. “When you are only given one chance to prove what you know, but you are given an exam that is close ended, there is a problem,” Guillot said. “In other classes we are given a chance to make up points.”Another student from Zuppi’s class, Patrick Hall, said he thought Zuppi was one of the best international law professors.Hall said Zuppi was knowledgeable about international law and especially criminal law, and his departure was a detriment to the Law School.—-Contact Joy Lukachick at [email protected]