The University of Mississippi is honoring Paul Caffera, the ombudsman who fought a two-year legal battle with the university to protect confidential information about employees who sought help from his office.
Officials targeted his office in 2020 as part of an effort to uncover the identity of whistleblowers who turned over emails that formed the basis for this publication’s “UM Emails” series.
The University announced on Tuesday that Caffera was among 12 “outstanding staff members” earning an award at the annual Staff Appreciation Week Awards Ceremony for his work in equal employment opportunity services. The award does not mention his past battles with the administration, however.
The UM Ombuds website explains Caffera’s role this way: “The University Ombuds provides the University of Mississippi Community with a confidential, neutral, independent, and informal place to voluntarily seek assistance with bringing forth and resolving campus-related concerns, problems, or disputes. … The purpose of the University Ombuds is to ensure that every voice at the University of Mississippi can be heard, without fear of loss of privacy, retaliation, or retribution.”
The UM Emails Revelations
The Mississippi Free Press published the three-part UM Emails exposé in August 2020, revealing the communications between university officials and donors who expressed racist views or threatened to withhold funding over anti-racism efforts.
The emails showed that, even as former journalism school dean Will Norton publicly condemned former school namesake Ed Meek in 2018 for warning about plummeting real estate values while posting photos of two Black women out in town one night, he courted donations from another donor named Blake Tartt.
Former UM School of Journalism and New Media Dean Will Norton’s emails were at the center of the UM Emails exposé. He is pictured here in September 2018 when he condemned remarks by former school namesake Ed Meek. Photo courtesy University of Mississippi
The emails revealed that Tartt took the photo Meek later posted. Before Meek’s post, Tartt shared the photo with Norton, privately calling the women “African hookers” who were “ruining” Oxford’s culture. “I happen to know what happens when a place is over taken by the
