University of Porto
FMUP – Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto
Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto lifts provisional suspension of professor accused, by students, of harassment.
The Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP) lifted the provisional suspension of a teacher of that institution accused in October by students from harassment on social networkssaid the director of FMUP, Altamiro da Costa Pereira.
“A jurist [da Reitoria da Universidade do Porto] who carried out the investigation concluded that archiving”, the director of FMUP, Altamiro da Costa Pereira, told Lusa.
As Altamiro da Costa Pereira stated, the jurist concluded that there was “no evidence, in practice, of harassment or disruption whether in academic life or outside academic life”.
On October 25th, in response to Lusa in a written message, the professor in question assured that I had never harassed anyone “in person or through digital means”.
To Lusa, the group of U.Porto students who made the complaint told that the FMUP professor had followed on social media, put ‘likes’ on private photos, interacted with the ‘stories’ (shared video stories) and sent inappropriate messages.”
The conclusion of the investigation now goes to the rector from the University of Porto, António de Sousa Pereira, who is the figure with the disciplinary power to archive the process.
“The process is still going to the Rectory, but I have just lifted the professor’s suspension”, said the director of FMUP, adding that the professor will start working again in the next few days, namely in supervising exams and supervising master’s theses.
“On the 5th [de janeiro], [o professor] already go supervise exams”.
Asked by Lusa about whether the process ends positively, Altamiro da Costa Pereira assumes that the process “should never have started” and recalled that it began with an “anonymous complaint” that “did not present facts capable of being judged by an outsider as constituting any crime of harassment”.
“These things are never positive for anyone, starting with the teacher and the image of the Faculty [de Medicina]”, he replied, reiterating that the “process unfortunately should never have started”.
