Every weekday at 8 a.m., when Sayed A. Nassar unlocks the
door that leads to a cluster of faculty offices in Lawrence
Technological University's mechanical-engineering complex, all
the rooms are dark.

Until 4:30 p.m., he is busy, preparing for his classes,
working on revisions for the second edition of his book,
seeing his students.

He is not watching the clock. But he is acutely aware that he
cannot leave. He is, say some faculty colleagues, under "house
arrest."

Mr. Nassar must be in his office, Monday to Friday from 8 to
4:30, if he is not in class. He must keep a record of his
attendance. He must be evaluated by his dean and department
chairman as frequently as once a month. He must ask permission
to leave the campus. He must be accompanied by the dean or the
dean's designee to attend an off-campus meeting.

"The most difficult thing is the fact that I am being singled
out and treated differently," says Mr. Nassar, a tenured
professor who has been at Lawrence Tech since 1985. "It is so
humiliating. I decline things I normally would do because I
have to ask every time," he says, citing a lecture he was
asked to give by an Islamic community group. "It's not worth
the hassle."

Mr. Nassar endures such extraordinary working conditions
because he is being monitored by the administration of
Lawrence Tech, a small university of 3,000 students in
Southfield, Mich., just north of Detroit. Although he was
cleared of misconduct charges by a faculty committee, the
university's Board of Trustees reversed those findings and
imposed harsh rules restricting his conduct. For antagonizing
the administration, some professors say, Mr. Nassar was the
latest faculty member to be put on a "hit list."

In response, Mr. Nassar has sued Lawrence Tech for breach of
contract, retaliation, defamation, and discrimination. The
university denies the charges. No trial date has been set.

Mr. Nassar's situation is only the most extreme example of
what many professors at Lawrence Tech say is a pattern of
administrative abuse of faculty members. The men who lead this
former technical school, created 70 years ago to supply the
automobile industry with engineers and other specialists,
treat the institution like a corporation where employees can
be hired and fired at will, the critics say.

At least four other faculty members have been forced to leave
after disagreements with administrators; two of them, like Mr.
Nassar, had been cleared of misconduct by a faculty committee,
whose decisions the administrators refused to accept. Lawrence
Tech's top administrators, professors say, have rewritten the
faculty handbook to take away any voice faculty members might
have in university governance, and generally run roughshod
over professors.

"How can you run a multimillion-dollar university and expect
the faculty to have no voice," says one longtime professor.
"If you work on an assembly line, you do your job, go home,
and be quiet."

That's how Lawrence Tech administrators think a university
should be run, he says.

The university's treatment of professors, and particularly of
Mr. Nassar, astounds national faculty leaders. "I have never
heard of anything like this," says Mary Burgan, general
secretary of the American Association of University
Professors, which censured Lawrence Tech in 1997 because of
its dismissal of another professor. "This treatment is
demeaning. If it is to address problems of unprofessional
behavior, we have to ask what profession we're talking about
here."

Charles M. Chambers, the university's president since 1993,
shrugs off the criticism from far and near. He says that the
AAUP is entitled to its opinion, but insists that the
university's faculty policies comply with the "prevailing
standards of due process and academic freedom in American
higher education."

Mr. Chambers, a lawyer, physicist, and former head of the
American Institute of Biological Sciences, says that he has
often found the AAUP guidelines to be "reasonable in
statement." But in many cases, the AAUP "appeared to have been
strongly influenced by personal bias, provocative rhetoric,
and a class-struggle mentality reminiscent of a Marxist
discourse on proletariat exploitation."

As for the idea of an enemies list, "that's just a figment of
somebody's imagination," he says. "There have been no faculty
disciplinary actions taken because someone has spoken out. We
do have standards. And I will not be sorry about that."

The Closing of a Lab

Lawrence Tech says the trouble for Mr. Nassar came to a head
in April 2000, when he was called into the office of Lewis N.
Walker, the provost. Mr. Walker told Mr. Nassar that he had
been suspended with pay and barred from the campus. He was
told that he would be served with charges to revoke his
tenure.

He later was told the cause of his suspension: On April 6,
2000, Mr. Nassar learned that a laboratory he had been using
for research and teaching was being closed. He marched over to
the office of his department's interim head, Laura L.
Lisiecki, and stood in the doorway, waving his arms and asking
if that meant he was going to be fired.

Ms. Lisiecki, a defendant in Mr. Nassar's lawsuit, declines to
comment on the case. She complained to the university at the
time that Mr. Nassar's conduct was threatening and
unprofessional. According to Mr. Nassar's lawsuit, she said
that if the university did not take action against him, she
would explore her own legal options.

In its charges, the university contended that Mr. Nassar had
"a long record of threatening behavior" that culminated in "an
assault on and false imprisonment of Dr. Laura Lisiecki" that
April day.

Provost Walker concluded that Mr. Nassar "is not fit to serve
as a member of the tenured faculty" at Lawrence Tech and
should be dismissed.

But Mr. Nassar and many of his colleagues believe his problems
at Lawrence Tech really began in 1995 with a comment about a
"WASP," which he thought was an insect.

Mr. Nassar had heard from several colleagues that, in a
meeting of the committee charged with hiring a new dean of the
College of Engineering, Mr. Walker had said that the dean
should reflect the local community, which was predominantly
white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. The provost, who declined
to be interviewed because he is a defendant in Mr. Nassar's
lawsuit, has denied making the remark. However, two supporters
of the professor have said that they heard the remark.

Mr. Nassar, who was not on the search committee, was incensed
when he learned the meaning of the word and asked for a
meeting with Mr. Walker to discuss it. "It's wrong for any
administration to advocate such a thing," says Mr. Nassar.

Raising the issue with the provost and, later, the president
put Mr. Nassar on the "hit list," some colleagues say. The
incident with Ms. Lisiecki was merely a long-awaited excuse to
fire him, they say.

"They terminate people who didn't agree with their behavior,"
says George T. Kartsounes, a former dean of engineering at
Lawrence Tech and now provost and vice president for academic
affairs at the Oregon Institute of Technology. "They blow
minor infractions into a big deal and fire them."

The faculty committee on tenure heard 15 hours of testimony
about Mr. Nassar's behavior, and the provost went back more
than a decade to show a pattern of misconduct, mostly
disagreements with professors or administrators that on any
other campus might pass unnoticed. One witness who did not
appear at the hearing was Ms. Lisiecki, who was leaving town
that day to visit her ill mother-in-law. A number of committee
members later questioned why the hearing was not postponed
until the principal witness could be present, but the session
went ahead.

The faculty committee unanimously found that there was no
reason to strip Mr. Nassar of tenure. Closing his lab in the
middle of a semester without consulting with him was, the
committee said, "a valid basis for protest." Moreover, it
concluded, dissent "is inherent in a university setting" and
"is the essence of university life."

In a concurring opinion, the committee's chairman, Scott
Schneider, agreed that Mr. Nassar should keep his tenured
position, but he said that shouting at a colleague was
unprofessional and that Mr. Nassar had been involved in some
"troubling" incidents, though none of them were in recent
years.

No committee members would speak on the record about the case,
but four agreed to talk if their names were not divulged.

One member was bothered because the university tried to smear
Mr. Nassar with incidents that had happened years before. If
Mr. Nassar was so bad, he says, "Why did his supervisors give
him good reviews? Why did they give him tenure?" Seven of 12
annual evaluations rated Mr. Nassar "exceptional," the highest
ranking. Even Ms. Lisiecki rated him "highly successful," the
second-highest ranking.

Another member found the allegation of a "hit list" to be
utterly credible. "Everybody knew Sayed was at the top of it,"
he says. "He's a general pain in the neck. He challenged
things. He would bring things up in meetings that were
sensitive." But, the member adds, that was no reason to get
rid of him.

Mr. Nassar, 54, has a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the
University of Cincinnati and is a well-known expert on bolts
and fasteners -- the things that hold cars together. He is the
co-author, with John H. Bickford, of the Handbook of Bolts and
Bolted Joints, considered the bible of the field, and has
received nearly $700,000 in grants, mostly from the Ford Motor
Company and the Chrysler Corporation, for research.

Talented but Tactless

Mr. Kartsounes, the former dean, says that in addition to
being a "world expert" in his field, Mr. Nassar is "principled
to the point of being a problem. He's very religious, and he
thinks there's black and white and nothing in between."

"As dean, I was warned about him, told that he was a
'troublemaker,'" Mr. Kartsounes says. "But he worked well with
his colleagues."

Craig Hoff, a former chairman of the mechanical-engineering
department at Lawrence Tech and now an associate professor at
Kettering University, in Flint, Mich., agrees, although he
says he at first had problems with Mr. Nassar.

"There were aspects of his behavior that I thought were
pushing the limit," Mr. Hoff says. "He questioned every
decision I made. But, the bulk of the time, he was
professional. His behavior was out of a sense of what was
right." His problem, the former chairman concludes, is that
"he doesn't know how to be tactful about it."

"Dr. Nassar chose battles that others might not have taken
on," says Scott A. Brooks, the professor's lawyer. But, he
adds, "university professors are supposed to have a great deal
of freedom."

Personality quirks aside, Mr. Nassar is a great teacher,
colleagues say.

"He was just phenomenal in the classroom," Mr. Hoff says. "The
students loved him." But Mr. Nassar's talents and tactlessness
coexisted uneasily, he says. "What do you do? You have a great
professor -- who happens to be a pain in the ass." Still, he
concludes,"you don't get fired because you're a pain in the
ass. Tenure is supposed to protect you."

Steven K. Howell, the department's current chairman, came to
Lawrence Tech just a year ago from the Visteon Corporation. He
notes that opinion about Mr. Nassar is mixed: Some professors
think he has been treated unjustly, while others think he has
made "pretty serious" mistakes. Mr. Howell calls Mr. Nassar a
"lightning rod" and adds, "I've been told by many professors
he should have been fired a long time ago."

Mr. Nassar himself admits that he may have offended some
people. "Out of passion for my work and my profession and my
students, I may be guilty of some of this," he says. "No one
is perfect."

'We're All Scared'

The whisper of fear is loud at Lawrence Tech.

Professors talk in low tones among themselves about who may be
next on the "hit list." Many faculty members decline to talk
about the university at all, or request that they not be
quoted by name. Those who will answer questions close their
office doors or ask to be called at home.

"We're all scared," says one professor, who asks to remain
anonymous. People worry about their jobs, says another, who
has been at the university for more than a dozen years,
particularly "if they voice their opinion in opposition to the
administration."

They cite not only Mr. Nassar's plight but also the four other
tenured professors who have left, two of whom reached
settlements with Lawrence Tech, agreeing not to talk about
their cases. One of the four has since died, and another
packed up and left town -- simply disappeared, say faculty
members.

One source of tension between the faculty and the
administration may stem from the university's nature. It's
different from big technology institutions like Caltech and
MIT. Lawrence Tech's students come mainly from Michigan and
nearby Ontario, with a large group of recruited Taiwanese
students. A number of part-time students take evening classes
that are paid for by their employers -- the auto companies. In
fact, the Lawrence brothers, for whom the university was
named, were the chief engineers at Ford.

For many years after the founding of the school, in 1932, they
hand-picked its top administrators. Most Lawrence Tech
graduates stay in the Detroit area, working for companies,
like Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors, that are also
represented on the university's board.

The focus is on undergraduate teaching, not research, so many
faculty members feel they lack the research credentials to
move easily to another university, says Mr. Hoff. "They're
really faculty there for life," he says, "so they don't have
options if the administration is mad at them," citing one
reason for the faculty nervousness. And unlike liberal-arts
professors, he adds, technology professors don't tend to worry
about academic freedom, because their work rarely calls it
into question.

But faculty members at Lawrence Tech haven't always been
quiet. In 1997, a resolution declaring no confidence in Mr.
Chambers's leadership passed the full-time faculty
overwhelmingly, 65 to 12, with 8 abstentions.

The Board of Trustees ignored the resolution. Lloyd Reuss, the
board's chairman and a former president of General Motors,
said the trustees supported Mr. Chambers because he was
"carrying out [our] wishes," according to a Detroit business
publication. Mr. Reuss did not return telephone calls seeking
comment.

Another source of friction was the faculty handbook. A faculty
committee had worked diligently for several years when it
presented a proposed handbook to the administration in January
1998.

But a few weeks later, after the provost, president, and
trustees had finished revising the proposal, the handbook was
hardly recognizable, say several professors familiar with the
process.

"The Faculty Senate submitted a host of recommended changes,
additions, and clarifications to this draft, most of which
were adopted by the trustees in the final version," Mr.
Chambers explains.

But Stanley F. Harris, a management professor who headed the
faculty's handbook committee, disagrees. "With few exceptions,
the substantive changes did not get made," he says. "The
faculty have very little authority in terms of governance
here," he adds. "I think much of it relates to the president's
and provost's style and personality."

Professors never voted on the handbook that they are supposed
to live by. "It was presented to us as a done deal," says Mr.
Harris. "There was no need to vote on it."

The current head of the Faculty Senate, Anthony Sky, declines
to comment. But others say the governing body has no power and
cannot even attract members from some schools because
professors are afraid to get involved.

'Incredible' Restrictions

After the faculty committee on tenure found no reason to
terminate Mr. Nassar, Mr. Chambers took the case to Mr. Reuss,
who decided that it should be heard by the board's executive
committee. The provost told the five-member panel that Mr.
Nassar's testimony could not be believed and that the faculty
committee's decision was "preposterous," according to a
written statement that he read to the trustees.

The executive committee -- which included Mr. Chambers and Mr.
Reuss -- declined to fire Mr. Nassar, but it did unanimously
find a "history of unacceptable professional conduct." In a
one-page report, which did not say what that conduct was, the
committee said he would be reinstated but subjected to close
scrutiny.

In November 2001, a letter outlined the suffocating rules for
Mr. Nassar.

"The restrictions are utterly incredible," says Mr.
Kartsounes, the former dean. "He's being treated as if he did
something wrong, even though he was cleared by the faculty
committee."

Not so, says Mr. Chambers. "He is not being held accountable
for anything more than the rest of the faculty is."

But were any other professors required to be in their offices
during spring break and in the period between New Year's Day
and the start of classes? "The rest of the faculty is not
being monitored," the president replies. "He's got his full
privileges. He's just being monitored."

When Mr. Nassar asked to leave the campus to be interviewed by
a reporter in his lawyer's office, permission was denied. And
he was formally reprimanded for taking a day off without pay
during spring break to go to Washington, D.C., to discuss a
government grant he was seeking.

"I used to ask myself all the time, How do they get away with
this stuff?" says Mr. Hoff. "This is insane."

"Much of the faculty is looking at retirement in the next 5 to
10 years," says one professor. "They'll keep their heads down
till then."