Jan Kemp Says Accord Is Reached for Her Return to Post at Georgia

Jan Kemp, the fired University of Georgia assistant professor, said Friday that an agreement has been reached by which she will return to the school but will not report to the two administrators whom she battled successfully in court.

Kemp, former coordinator of the English program in the remedial Developmental Studies Program, said Thursday night that she and the university had reached an agreement under which she would receive a cash settlement and get her job back.

Claiming that she was fired for protesting special classroom treatment for star athletes at Georgia, Kemp had won $2.58 million in a federal lawsuit decided in February, only to see a judge last week order the amount reduced to $680,000.

Kemp told the Gwinnett Daily News on Friday that the parties have tentatively agreed on a settlement of $1 million.

She had formerly said she would put university officials on trial again--in a new amount-of-damages hearing--rather than accept U.S. District Judge Horace Ward’s reduction of the award by 74%.

“We freed the faculty and the attorney general to disclose the facts,” she said. “Public outrage will clean up the campus, and that was my purpose all along.”

One condition of the settlement, Kemp said, is that, upon returning to the faculty, she will not have to report to Virginia Trotter, vice president for academic affairs, or to Leroy Ervin, developmental studies director--the two defendants in her suit.

Kemp said she will be allowed a full seven years to earn tenure--a virtually guaranteed, permanent faculty position--not counting her first five years on the faculty, which ended with her firing. She also will receive a guaranteed salary and the promise that she will not endure retaliation for filing her suit.