Can refusing to attend mandatory Title IX training be grounds for suspending a tenured faculty member? In the US all the universities that receive federal funding must ensure (or so I heard) that all their employees and students take one class about the Title IX law, concerning sexual harassment and related subjects. Can refusing to attend these classes be a motive for firing or suspending a tenured member of faculty? Is there precedent of tenured faculty being fired for this?

[I ask the question not for myself, but because at my university (Brandeis), the administration has decided on its own to add to include in the title IX course a new "racial awareness" training that I find highly objectionable. Before encouraging others to boycott these trainings, I would like to know what I expose them to.]
Put yourself in the shoes of a university administrator. The federal government has made a law requiring your university to do certain things if it wants to maintain its federal funding. Those things are to some extent subject to interpretation, but according to legal opinions of your university's lawyers (e.g., the general counsel or other high-ranking legal advisers) requiring your faculty to undergo Title IX training about race is a good way to comply with the requirements and minimize the risk to your institution. So, you institute these requirements as mandatory. Some months later you are informed that a tenured faculty member is refusing to take the training.

What do you do? Select the answer that applies:


  A. Invite the faculty member over for a chat in your office, where
  over cigars and a glass of scotch you both joke about the silliness of
  the federal requirements. You congratulate him on his good sense in
  objecting to these requirements, ask him to keep quiet about not
  taking the training so as to not make trouble for your university, and
  jovially send him on his way with an invitation to meet soon for a round of golf.
  
  B. Invite the faculty member over for a chat in your office, where you
  tell him that you are dissatisfied with his disregard for university
  policy, but that you understand that he is objecting to the training
  on principled, conscientious grounds, and confide that you even agree
  with him to some extent. Taking that into account, and taking into
  account the fact that he is tenured and that you value his research
  contributions, you tell him that you have decided not to take any
  disciplinary action. You caution him to keep quiet about not taking
  the training and not encourage others to follow in his footsteps so as
  to not make trouble for your university, and send him on his way.
  
  C. Send the faculty member a sternly-worded memo, with a copy to his
  dean and department chair, where you inform him that following his
  refusal to follow the mandatory requirement to undergo Title IX
  training, you are initiating disciplinary proceedings against him.
  You caution him that disregard for university policies on Title IX
  will not be tolerated under any circumstances, and that such
  proceedings could lead to various sanctions up to and including his
  termination. You conclude the memo by saying that until the
  proceedings have been set in motion some weeks from now, he has one
  last chance to satisfy the training requirement.


Now, it may be that you are the kind of person who would select answer B, or even A. I'm not saying it is unreasonable or wrong to be such a person, but if that is the case, I maintain that that would be in strong correlation to the fact that you are not a high-ranking university administrator -- let alone a successful one -- and probably never will be (I say this as a completely neutral statement, which I consider to be neither an insult nor a compliment). In practice, answer C is the only answer that a REAL university administrator (and certainly a successful one, who has a good ability to weigh the consequences of each of the different options on his/her own career and institution) will realistically choose.

To summarize, the answer to your question is an emphatic Yes: refusing to take mandatory training not only can lead to suspension or termination, but that is in fact the most likely outcome of such an action, by an overwhelming margin.