The suicide of a popular Princeton University Spanish lecturer after being abruptly dismissed continues to raise questions as his friends talk to more media outlets. Antonio Calvo was found dead in his Manhattan apartment on April 12, with self-inflicted stab wounds, just four days before being essentially kicked out of his Princeton office. Calvo's contract was up for renewal, which is standard process, but, friends claims, two graduate students and another lecturer banded together against Calvo, complaining that in one instance he said, "You're spending too much time touching your balls. Why don't you go to work?"
The friend told the Post, "It was interpreted as sexual harassment, but it's a common expression in Spanish. Some people saw him as politically incorrect, but it was just the way he was -- his personality." The NY Times characterized that complaint, "In [one incident], he jokingly referred to a male student’s genitalia in an e-mail, using a common Spanish expression that implores someone to get to work," adding, "In [another] episode earlier this academic year, Dr. Calvo told a graduate student that she deserved a slap on the face, and slapped his own hands together."
Calvo oversaw the Spanish department and all the graduate students. A friend who teaches at Columbia University told the NY Times that when she saw him in February, "He was very upset because he was undergoing a review, which was normal, but some of the graduate students were not following what they had to do. Some didn’t even show up to classes that they were teaching, and it’s his responsibility to make sure that the language program runs smoothly." Calvo, a Spanish national, was in the U.S. thanks to a work visa sponsored by Princeton; without a visa, he would have needed to find another job offering him a visa quickly or return to Spain.
Besides Calvo's friends, undergraduate students have been unhappy about the lack of answers from Princeton about his dismissal. One said, "I really want to know more about what happened. I want the holes to be filled before I can move on." Another student said, "If there was an indiscretion on his part, this should all be left alone. But if there’s a fault on the part of an individual or group or institution that perhaps treated him unfairly or unethically, that needs to be addressed and actions should be taken."
