Just out is Dean Harold Doty's letter of response to Provost Jay Grimes' "Black Friday" memo. The Black Friday memo, which was first publicized in a faculty meeting of the USM College of Business on February 4, ordered the College to institute a "hybrid" MBA program at once, and strongly discouraged its faculty from engaging in any "theoretical/basic research" in the future. (Doty's response was obtained under a Mississippi Public Records Act request.)

Doty comes out firing, with a cogent, well-written point-by-point response to the statements in the Black Friday memo.

I may offer a more detailed analysis later. Worth noting off the top is the fact that the letter is blind-copied to no fewer than 3 attorneys, one of whom (Robert McDuff) participated in the defense of Gary Stringer and Frank Glamser after USM President Shelby Thames tried to fire them last March. So obviously, an attempt to fire Doty is imminent. The letter is copied to President Thames and to the Associate Dean of the College of Business--but pointedly not to Ken Malone, who was at the meeting that Grimes purported to describe in the Black Friday memo. By leaving him out, Doty is making clear that Malone is not in his management chain (as Thames' chief enforcer, Malone acts as though he is in everyone's management chain at USM).

Doty also references a failure to make a proper report to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools concerning a new distance education program in Ken Malone's area. So the danger that Grimes and Malone, and the Thames regime more generally, are posing to USM's overall accreditation has now been put on the table.