An internal panel voted against firing – but the president overrode them
A Tennessee appeals court just ruled a university had every right to fire a tenured professor – even after an internal panel said otherwise.
On March 20, 2026, the Court of Appeals of Tennessee at Jackson handed down its decision in a case, reversing a lower court order that had reinstated the professor with backpay. The ruling sends a clear signal to HR professionals: when building a termination case, the cumulative weight of documented misconduct matters far more than any single incident.
Cedar Nordbye joined the University of Memphis in 2003 as an assistant professor of art and earned tenure in 2009. By 2015, his supervisor was fielding a steady stream of complaints about Nordbye's conduct toward students, colleagues, and staff. What followed was a sprawling catalog of workplace incidents spanning roughly two and a half years.
Nordbye used a racial slur in class without providing educational context. He sent a student an email that his supervisor described as a veiled threat about the student's future career prospects. A second student reported feeling humiliated by Nordbye's treatment – prompting other faculty to take the unusual step of advising the student to file a formal grievance. He silk-screened messages onto campus walls, damaging state property. He taped images of firearms to campus buildings overnight, alarming custodial staff who discovered them the next morning. He was involved in two separate confrontations in the on-campus Subway restaurant – one a shouting match with a student that required his supervisor to break up, and another in which he yelled at students to stop eating there. During a fire drill, he refused to move away from the building as directed by a colleague and instructed students to ignore the order.
He repeatedly failed to complete basic duties. He once neglected to hire an instructor before the semester started, leaving students in a classroom with no professor. He failed to recruit models for a drawing class and blamed a graduate student. He brought unpreserved bird remains into class without following safety protocols and resisted compliance when confronted, arguing the remains posed no risk.
Nordbye was arrested on campus outside his classroom in front of students on a domestic assault charge that was later dismissed. When a second warrant was issued the following month, he taught his class anyway and disclosed the warrant to students. He then refused to let a substitute take over, insisting he would attend and co-teach, which led to the classes being cancelled entirely. He used his university email to threaten a student with legal action over satirical stickers. He overslept a meeting scheduled to discuss his own performance evaluation and, when called, responded angrily and hung up.
Student evaluations were consistently damning. Students described his classroom manner as immature and unbearable, reported that classmates cried during critiques, and said he would arrive to class without a plan or spend time discussing television shows and cats. On a day set aside for reviewing student work, the class instead hauled a cherry picker up a flight of stairs and made carrot juice.
The university responded with interventions that HR professionals will recognize. Nordbye was assigned a faculty mentor – a step that was unprecedented for a tenured professor at the institution in 25 years. A performance improvement plan was developed. Neither produced lasting results. The mentor eventually resigned, warning Nordbye's supervisor not to meet with him alone. When presented with the improvement plan, Nordbye dismissed it as irrelevant to him.
In September 2017, Nordbye removed a sink from his classroom wall without authorization and later acknowledged in an email that he knew he was crossing a boundary. He was placed on administrative leave shortly after.
The university pursued termination for adequate cause. A panel of four tenured faculty members heard the case over several days in 2019 and voted 3-to-1 that the university had not proven its case, recommending a three-year performance improvement plan instead. University President David Rudd disagreed. He reviewed the panel's report and the hearing record, then signed a termination letter citing a pattern of unacceptable conduct, belligerence, insubordination, and deliberate failures to perform his duties.
Nordbye challenged the termination in the Shelby County Chancery Court, which sided with him – ruling that the president lacked authority to override the panel and that the evidence fell short. It ordered reinstatement with backpay.
The appeals court saw it differently on both counts. On presidential authority, the court found the faculty handbook plainly empowered the president to make a final decision on termination – including one contrary to the panel's recommendation. The handbook explicitly contemplated that scenario and laid out the procedure for it.
On the evidence, the court found the lower court committed a critical error by weighing each incident in isolation rather than looking at the record as a whole, as required by Tennessee law. The appeals court held that while individual incidents might not independently justify termination, the cumulative pattern clearly demonstrated a capricious disregard for accepted standards of professional conduct. The court also noted that several incidents – including the Subway confrontations and the use of a racial slur – were not even addressed in the lower court's analysis. Carleen Bongat
For HR professionals, the decision reinforces a principle worth remembering: a pattern of misconduct, thoroughly documented and assessed holistically, can withstand legal scrutiny – even when an internal review body initially disagrees. It also affirms that executive leadership retains the authority to make final termination decisions, provided institutional policies support that structure.
