The University of Alaska has rejected a faculty union grievance filed on behalf of a professor who had federal funding pulled for being an outspoken critic of the oil industry.

A university lawyer on Thursday rejected the claim filed on behalf of professor Rick Steiner. As a result, the decision to strip the $10,000 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant from Steiner stands.

Steiner, a 30-year university employee, has for years criticized what he considered were irresponsible actions by the oil industry, beginning with the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

"My job as a faculty member is to seek and teach the truth without fear and without favor and that is what I am doing," Steiner said. "Either you have complete freedom to speak your truth or you don't. Unfortunately what we have learned here is I don't."

University of Alaska system spokeswoman Kate Ripley said Steiner is wrong.

"We just don't believe his academic freedom or his freedom of speech has been infringed," she said.

Mark Hamilton, president of the University of Alaska system, appointed lawyer Roger Brunner to handle the grievance decision. In his decision, Brunner wrote Steiner's claims appear to be a continuation of past attempts to "free himself from supervision and to have the university create a different job for him which would be more to his liking."

Steiner received the money as an extension agent in NOAA's Sea Grant program.

A review of Steiner's employment history found that on numerous occasions he had accused someone of infringing on his academic freedom, Brunner said in his decision.

Brunner said free speech is protected both under university policy and constitutionally.

However, "Free speech is not freedom from the requirements to do one's job and to respond to reasonable direction," he said.

Ripley said the university believes strongly in freedom of speech and academic freedom.

"There has been no retaliatory action against Professor Steiner," she said.

She pointed out that Steiner remains fully funded. When one month of the funding source for Steiner's salary "changed" the university stepped in last spring to restore the money by using university general funds, she said.

According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a Washington, D.C.-based group that Steiner belongs to, he assumed a public profile in 1989 as a university marine adviser in Cordova responding to the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

After that, the university administrators began applying pressure to prevent Steiner from making public statements regarding oil and environmental issues in general, PEER says.

He was told by administrators at one point to stop being an advocate and refrain from publicly criticizing the university, PEER says.

Against his wishes, Steiner's office was moved into the main Marine Advisory Program office even though he considers that to be a hostile work environment, PEER says.

Ripley said the move had been in the works for years and was intended to bring him closer to his colleagues.

Steiner said this week that he is on an extended sick leave from the university that began in August.

He said the faculty union still could take its grievance to binding arbitration but he feels that the matter has already been "pushed as far as it can go."

The latest chapter began in 2008 when Steiner held a news conference about his concerns that a University of Alaska and NOAA Sea Grant conference on offshore oil development in Bristol Bay did not focus enough on environmental risks.

PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said Steiner is being punished for criticizing the oil industry in a state where big oil has influence.

He provided a copy of a letter sent from a NOAA assistant administrator in May regarding Ruch's concerns that the Sea Grant program was favoring the oil and gas industry. The letter said extension agents must avoid "the appearance of advocating for any particular position" in order to be successful.

"When extension personnel fail to take a neutral approach to controversial issues, they jeopardize their ability to work effectively with all sectors," the letter said.

PEER intends to send a formal petition to the Obama administration to make sure that people who receive NOAA grants aren't constrained from speaking out as scientists or as citizens, Ruch said.

"President Hamilton seems to believe that his faculty still enjoys academic freedom even while he permits imposition of penalties for views simply because they conflict with the university's financial backers -- big oil," he said.