It’s starting to look like a pattern. Another junior professor at Brooklyn College with an impressive record of teaching and research was recently denied reappointment, and students and professors are once again up in arms. The first case, that of the history department’s K.C. Johnson, will be familiar to readers of these columns. Mr. Johnson was denied tenure for “lack of collegiality” after insisting that a departmental search be conducted based on merit rather than gender and after objecting to a college program on the aftermath of September 11 failed to include any speakers supportive of Israeli or American government policies.

The new case, that of assistant professor of philosophy Michael Cholbi, is depressingly familiar. He’s praised by colleagues: “He deserves reappointment. It’s extremely unusual for something like this to happen. He’s publishing at a rate well above what would be the norm at the college,” Jonathan Adler, who’s been a professor of philosophy at Brooklyn College for 25 years, told us. Mr. Adler said he’s observed Mr. Cholbi in the classroom and found he did a “superb job.”

That assessment, as in the case of K.C. Johnson, is echoed by students. “There are very few professors who are fine enough to have an effect on your course in life, and he’s one of them,” said Daniel Imparato, a senior at Brooklyn College who was so impressed by Mr. Cholbi’s teaching style that he dropped his computer science major and switched to philosophy.

In Mr. Johnson’s case, there was strange behavior by the history department chairman, Philip F. Gallagher, who had written in an e-mail about a search for new members of the department that he suggested “finding some women that we can live with, who are not whiners from the word go or who need therapy as much as they need a job.”

In Mr. Cholbi’s case, he tells us that the philosophy department chairman, Emily Michael, had complained to him after his Fall 2001 annual review that he did not say “hello” in the hallways to other department members. Ms. Michael did not return our phone calls or an e-mail seeking comment.

A Brooklyn College spokeswoman, Alice Newcomb-Doyle, confirmed that Mr. Cholbi was not recommended for reappointment by the president of Brooklyn College, Christoph Kimmich. She said she couldn’t talk about the reasons because of privacy laws.

There is an Alice-in-Wonderland-like appeals process, by which Mr. Cholbi can appeal the decision to the very president who denied him reappointment in the first place. The contract between the City University of New York, of which Brooklyn College is a part, and the professional staff union clearly provides (in Section 9.9) that the president is required to “furnish a written statement of his or her reasons” to an employee whose reappointment is not recommended. The contract says such reasons must be supplied 10 days after the employee asks for them. Yet in this case, the college’s position, so far as we can tell from Mr. Cholbi and the spokeswoman, is that it might be willing to provide him with reasons only after a decision on an appeal. The decision is expected by March 1. How is a professor supposed to mount an effective appeal if he isn’t told the reason for the original decision?

Surely, not every junior faculty member who complains publicly deserves tenure or reappointment, not even those who are popular with students. But given Mr. Cholbi’s record of teaching and scholarship, it sure looks like the reason in this case that the Brooklyn president is so reluctant to state publicly is the same highly subjective “lack of collegiality” charge that was brought against Mr. Johnson. As CUNY trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld has memorably stated, that’s a standard more appropriate for a country club than for an institution of higher learning, where personnel decisions are more appropriately based on teaching and scholarship. The city and state’s taxpayers are subsidizing these shenanigans. They — and, just as importantly, Brooklyn’s students — deserve a college that’s run less like a poorly managed country club and more like a world-class university.