A former professor at Pennsylvania State University is suing the school on the grounds that it pressured him to discriminate against white people in faculty training and academic grading.
Zack K. DePiero, who worked as a non-tenure-track assistant teaching professor of English and composition at Penn State’s Abington campus, resigned in August after university administrators created a hostile work environment by forcing him to treat and evaluate his students on the basis of race.
“Almost immediately upon beginning his employment at Penn State, defendants pressured DePiero to conform to their political viewpoints,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed June 14 and first reported by InsideHigherEd. The lawsuit names as defendants Penn State, its board of trustees, its president, the chancellor of the Penn State at Abington campus, and multiple other current and former Penn State employees.
DePiero, who now teaches at a local community college, argues that university administrators violated the First Amendment and state and federal civil rights laws by directing him to teach that writing itself is racist.
“[English department chairwoman Lilian] Naydan instructed her writing faculty to teach that white supremacy exists in language itself, and therefore, that the English language itself is ‘racist’ and, furthermore, that white supremacy exists in the teaching of writing of English, and therefore writing teachers are themselves racist white supremacists,” the suit says.
DePiero’s superiors also pressured him to put his thumb on the scale to ensure equal performance outcomes across racial groups, meaning that he’d theoretically be forced to “penalize students academically on the basis of race.”.
“Racist structures are quite real in assessment and elsewhere regardless of the good intentions that teachers and scholars bring to the set-up of those structures. For me, the racism is in the results if the results draw a color line,” Naydan wrote in an email to DePiero and two white colleagues, the complaint says.
Penn State’s discriminatory actions escalated after George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020, the complaint says. Penn State administrators allegedly wrote in an email around that time that white employees should “Stop talking.” The email also ordered writing faculty members to “assure that all students see that white supremacy manifests itself in language and in writing pedagogy.”
When DePiero filed a bias report in September with the university’s Affirmative Action Office, associate director Carmen Borges allegedly told him, “There is a problem with the white race.”
At an October 2021 training, DePiero said he pressed coordinators about the curricula and the university’s “anti-racist” policies, the complaint suggests. In response, Naydan and another defendant filed a bullying and harassment complaint against him, the complaint alleges.
They also ostracized him due to his political views, according to the suit. One month into the job, Naydan “loudly expressed concern and disbelief that plaintiff was not a registered Democrat,” the suit alleges.
Penn State refused to comment.