Feb 11, 2016 / 15:42 pm
Updated on Feb 12, 2016 at 4:59 p.m. EST : Mount St. Mary's University announced that school president Simon Newman has reinstated Professor Thane Naberhaus and Edward Egan as employees, effective immediately. According to a statement Friday, Newman said that they have his "solemn commitment to work together to restore our relationship and our school." Mount St. Mary's board member Fr. Kevin Farmer also stated that despite calls for Newman's resignation, the board "continues to support" him.
Amid uproar over comparing struggling students to bunnies that should be drowned or shot, Mount St. Mary's University president is now under fire for criticizing expressions of the Catholic faith at the school.
Already facing turmoil, the second-oldest Catholic university in the country is now seeing alumni and former faculty members publicly expressing their concerns over President Simon Newman's disparaging remarks about the college's Catholic identity – even reportedly calling some students "Catholic jihadis."
Thane Naberhaus, a tenured professor who was recently fired from the Maryland university, told CNA that the president wanted to downplay the school's Catholic identity because, in his words, "Catholic doesn't sell."