NU's Protess to Retire

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jun 14, 2011 3:30PM

David Protess, the founder of Northwestern University's Medill Innocence Project and one of the university's highest profile faculty members, announced his retirement from the university at the end of August. Depending on your newspaper headline, Protess is either renowned and controversial.

Both are apt descriptors. Through his work at the Medill Innocence Project, Protess and Medill and his students brought international attention to the university through their efforts to clear wrongfully convicted individuals, including people on Illinois' Death Row.

But Protess has run afoul of university administrators in recent months over ethics questions related to the Innocence Project's investigation into the case of Anthony McKinney. Protess and innocence Project students were accused of paying witnesses and wearing wiretaps. Protess also was accused by the university of not cooperating with the lawyer assigned to investigate the allegations, doctoring records and lying to university officials.

Protess was pulled from NU's teaching schedule in March. He later announced he was taking a leave of absence from NU in March, partly in order to establish a non-profit "Chicago Innocence Project" independent of any university, and, we suspect, independent of any ethics investigations from any university.

Both Protess and Northwestern would not discuss details of his departure, but Protess did indicate in an email that the two "parted on mutually agreeable terms."