There are many things which can get you in trouble as a professor. Sleeping with a student? Trouble. Drinking with students? Trouble. Sleeping with a drunk student? Big trouble. Now there’s a new one to add to the Don’t Do This If You Want to Keep Your Professorship list: participating in genocide.

Professor Leopold Munyakazi has been relieved of his duties at Goucher College in Maryland after it came to the university administration’s attention that Interpol was searching for Munyakazi after being indicted three years ago for genocide in Rwanda. Obviously, being part of the strategic killing of half a million people is not child’s play. So Goucher College has removed Munyakazi.

The New York Times reports:

A Rwandan professor has been removed from teaching French while Goucher College investigates claims that he was involved in the 1994 genocide in his home country, the school's president said in an e-mail to faculty and students.

Goucher College President Sanford Ungar said in the e-mail Saturday that he had been unaware of an Interpol advisory that asked for help finding Professor Leopold Munyakazi, who was indicted in 2006 on genocide charges in Rwanda.

''Dr. Munyakazi vehemently denies any involvement in committing genocide, and in fact has presented evidence that he assisted numerous Tutsis in fleeing Hutu killers,'' Ungar said.

More than a half-million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in 1994 after the then-president's plane was shot down as he returned from negotiating with Tutsi rebels.

Ungar said he removed Munyakazi from his teaching duties because the allegations are so serious, but the removal ''in no way reflects a judgment about Dr. Munyakazi or about the charges that have been made.''

He said a U.S. Justice Department official stressed to him that an indictment in Rwanda is a statement of a prosecutor's views, not the result of a grand jury proceeding…

''Evidence that would either convict or exonerate Dr. Munyakazi beyond a reasonable doubt simply does not exist at this time, or if it does, I have not seen it,'' Ungar said.

If the charges are indeed proven, Goucher College made the only move possible. But what ever happened to the concept of “innocent until proven guilty”? Yes, that’s a value of the American justice system, not the American university system, but you’ve got to wonder if this is a bit premature, given Ungar’s admission that there really isn’t any decisive evidence yet. In any case, we can all raise our glasses to keeping genociders out of upper education.