Professor Banned From Campus For... What?

There was an article in yesterday's Globe about a University of Ottawa professor locked out of his office and banned from campus. The article implies that he was suspended from teaching because of his unorthodox teaching methods: he doesn't like to give grades, he altered course curriculum with student input.

It was not his job, as he explained later, to rank their skills for future employers, or train them to be “information transfer machines,” regurgitating facts on demand. Released from the pressure to ace the test, they would become “scientists, not automatons,” he reasoned.

Which, frankly, to me, sounds freaking fantastic. It's exactly what Alfie Kohn recommends: student-led learning, no evaluations.

I'm pretty sure we're not getting the whole story, though. A quick Google shows that this guy is a bit of a pain in the ass, so maybe the university has other reasons to can him. It would sure be nice if they would step and say so, if they do. In the meantime, it seems like they're being idiots.