Former OSU professor gets rehired after ‘manic episode’

The following article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.

The former Ohio State University professor who resigned during a “psychotic episode” and was ignored by the university has now gotten her job back.

News 5 first reported Dr. Angela Bryant’s story in April of 2022. Four months later, Bryant will rejoin OSU Newark as an associate professor of sociology.

Bryant spent more than a decade as a tenured associate professor of sociology at OSU’s Newark school. The next thing she knew, she woke up in a psychiatric hospital after being declared incapable of caring for herself by the Franklin County Probate Court, and she no longer had a job.

Bryant had sent a nearly-incoherent email resignation to her boss in 2020 while in a state of psychosis. In November of 2020, she sent the two-sentence note “I resign! Go f*** yourselves bc you are about to PAY UP!”

Bryant was experiencing a “manic episode,” set off by a recent diagnosis of bipolar disorder and PTSD, court records showed.

Once she became coherent two weeks later at the hospital, OSU told her she couldn’t come back.

Read the full News 5 investigation here.

Bryant was unable to talk to News 5 Monday because OSU and she had a deal that she wouldn’t speak to media, she and OSU Spokesperson Ben Johnson said.

However, Johnson did provide a statement.

“Ohio State is pleased to confirm that it has re-hired Associate Professor of Sociology Angela Bryant. The university and Dr. Bryant held productive discussions to understand each other’s perspectives, and following those discussions concluded that re-employment was a satisfactory outcome for all. The university looks forward to welcoming Dr. Bryant back to Ohio State Newark this fall.”

During the April interview, Bryant said her only goal was to get her job back. Although she couldn’t speak much, she did say she was thrilled to be back.

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