NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The University of Michigan on Thursday fired David Daniels, a professor of voice and one of the world’s leading countertenors, one year after he and his husband were charged with sexually assaulting another singer.

It was the first time in more than 60 years that the university’s board of regents had voted to dismiss a tenured faculty member, according to the board chairman, Ron Weiser. The board also denied Daniels severance pay.

“At the heart of every decision of the board is the safety and well-being of our students, and the integrity of the instruction to which our students are entitled,” Weiser said. “When the board sees this jeopardized by a tenured member of the faculty, we believe it is necessary to take the extreme action of dismissal.”

Daniels rose to fame singing high parts that were once the province of castratos or mezzo-sopranos at the Metropolitan Opera and around the world. When he and his husband, Scott Walters, were married in 2014, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an avid opera fan, officiated.

But Daniels suffered a downfall in January 2019 after he and Walters were arrested and charged in connection with a 2010 episode in which a singer said he had been drugged and assaulted by the couple, according to charging documents filed by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in Texas.

The singer, Samuel Schultz, who went public with his accusations in August 2018, said he had initially been afraid that speaking out about the episode would damage his fledgling career.

Schultz said that Daniels and Walters had assaulted him when, as a graduate student at Rice University in Houston, he had gone to hear Daniels in Handel’s “Xerxes” at Houston Grand Opera.

After attending the performance and cast party, Schultz said, he was invited to Daniels’ and Walters’ apartment. There, he said, he was given a drink that caused him to lose consciousness. He awoke alone, he said, naked and bleeding from his rectum.

The University of Michigan said that it placed Daniels on an administrative leave in August 2018 and ordered him not to have contact with students after Schultz spoke out about the episode.

“I am thankful that the University of Michigan ultimately chose to protect its students from future harm,” Schultz wrote in an email Thursday night. “Although the truth is inconvenient for those who deny victims their voice, the result of the investigation speaks for itself.”

The criminal case against Daniels and Walters has not yet gone to trial.

Matt Hennessy, a lawyer for the couple, denied Schultz’s accusations in January 2019.

“David and Scott are innocent of any wrongdoing,” Hennessy said. “Sam Schultz is not a victim. He never would have gotten this much attention from his singing, and he knows and resents that fact. He waited eight years to complain about adult, consensual sex to ride the #MeToo movement to unearned celebrity. We will fight this.”

Francyne B. Stacey, another lawyer for Daniels, objected to his dismissal from the University of Michigan, saying it “resulted from numerous due process and equal protection violations during the review proceedings.”

“In addition to how the university considered the allegations themselves, those violations included treating an openly gay male faculty member differently from heterosexual faculty members, both male and female, who allegedly engaged in similar conduct,” Stacey said. “Mr. Daniels obviously is deeply disappointed in the University’s action and is committed to fighting the unfairness it represents.”

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