I’ll take at face value, for purposes of discussion, the premise of your letter: that Ms. Quenette does not have the right temperment or social skills to be a professor. Fine.

That is a run-of-the-mill personnel issue that companies and organizations across the world deal with every day. Removing someone from a job is never a pleasant process, but in decent organizations, it is usually a relatively private one – kept private to, as much as possible, preserve the dignity of the person being removed. That someone may not be right for a specific job does not make them a bad person, and does not mean they are deserving of public shame or ridicule.

It is certainly within your rights to let the University know if a professor is not fit to teach. But I cannot fathom why you decided to write an “Open Letter” about this and publish it on the internet to the entire world.

What was your intent in doing this? To humiliate Ms. Quenette? To publicly shame her? To invite harassment? Even if that wasn’t your intent, you had to know those would be the consequences of your actions.

To be blunt, that decision does not reflect very well on you. It makes you look like vindictive bullies: a group of people ganging up to destroy another human being. If there is a high road here, you ceded it.

Whatever Ms. Quenette’s flaws as a professor, there is nothing noble or brave about you discarding her humanity and deciding to incite a public shaming. That is bullying, and it is shameful and wrong.

Whatever becomes of this, I hope all involved sincerely reflect on their actions. Everyone is deserving of basic dignity, including Andrea Quenette.