Recently, two psychology professors, Tanya Tompkins and Jennifer Linder, said that Dr. Davis had made a comment about the Holocaust during a department meeting in 2018. Promising to be open about budget cuts, he quoted a former professor of his who used to make the analogy, “You don’t send the Jews to the shower with soap,” Dr. Linder said. Dr. Tompkins remembered slightly different wording.
In an interview on Thursday, Dr. Davis said that while he doesn’t recall the comments he made that day, he doesn’t use the phrase anymore and added, “I’m sorry if I said something that offended them at that time.”
Last month, the faculty of arts and sciences took a vote of no confidence in Dr. Davis and Mr. Baca and urged them to resign in a resolution that condemned intolerance, discrimination and retaliation. The Oregon Board of Rabbis called on Dr. Davis and Mr. Baca to resign. And the Anti-Defamation League’s Pacific Northwest office urged Dr. Davis to consider stepping down.
Miri Cypers, the group’s regional director, said that while the A.D.L. frequently responds to hate and anti-Semitism on college campuses, “rarely is that anti-Semitism or hatred perpetrated by a president of a university or other leadership.”
The most serious of the sexual misconduct allegations involved a trustee, David Jubb, who resigned in June 2019 and was charged in an indictment last May with one count of felony sexual abuse and seven counts of misdemeanor sexual abuse. The indictment came after a student trustee filed a federal lawsuit in which she accused Mr. Jubb, 72, of assaulting her after a faculty-trustee dinner. Mr. Jubb has pleaded not guilty and his case is scheduled for trial in November, his lawyer said.
In another incident, Dr. Friedman reported that Dr. Davis had come up from behind her after a panel discussion in 2018 and had rubbed his hands up and down her arms while whispering that he was looking forward to meeting her later, she said.
Dr. Friedman said she had also reported that another trustee, Norman Nixon, a former member of the Los Angeles Lakers, touched her thigh during a university dinner and asked if there was a “Mr. Friedman.”
