Penn State professor who sued school says faculty were labeled ‘racist white supremacists’
Breccan F. Thies
A former Pennsylvania State University professor is suing the school and alleging he was subjected to racist attacks and forced to teach that “all students see that white supremacy manifests itself in language and in writing pedagogy.”
Zack De Piero, a former English professor at the school’s Abington campus, is suing Penn State and several members of the university’s current and former staff after he was “individually singled out for ridicule and humiliation because of the color of his skin,” according to a lawsuit filed by the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism on De Piero’s behalf.
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“When he complained about the continuous stream of racial insult directed at white faculty in the writing department, the director of the Affirmative Action Office told him that ‘There is a problem with the White race,’ that he should attend ‘antiracist’ workshops ‘until you get it,’ and that he might have mental health issues,” the lawsuit continues.
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Penn State treats the anti-racist movement, championed by people such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, who are often cited in critical race theory materials, incredibly seriously, according to De Piero.
De Piero said he was forced out of his position at Penn State after questioning the ideology.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, the professor explained that the school’s messaging was: “You need to move equity forwards in your classroom, or else you’re perpetuating racist teaching practices.”
The school was “consistently giving me this message that’s hostile towards white individuals, and I’m white,” he continued.
The diversity, equity, and inclusion homepage for the school has resources like “White Rage,” “White people, enough: A look at power and control,” and “Me and White Supremacy,” which “further disseminated racist tirades against white faculty and students on the basis of their race,” according to the lawsuit.
“This is wrong. This is discrimination,” De Piero said. “It’s humiliating to me. It’s likely humiliating to others. They’re just too afraid to tell you.”
De Piero also received emails to report “bias” and “wrongdoing,” which he said had messaging like “see something, say something.”
“This is not so dissimilar as if you see a student engaging in self-harm, or they’re in an abusive relationship at home, you know, you have to report that out as part of your responsibility as an instructor,” he added.
De Piero described the dedication of some of the faculty in religious terms.
They “endorsed extremely explicit derogatory content towards the white race. It’s that simple, and that’s a fact,” he explained. “They wanted you to acknowledge your white privilege, to embrace white guilt, to spread the gospel of Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo.”
“There were sort of high priests of anti-racism across academia,” he continued, adding, “This wasn’t some interesting idea up for debate; this was the deal. This was the road.”
De Piero’s direct supervisor during the incidents, Liliana Naydan, who is named in the lawsuit as a defendant, “expressed her view that racism practiced against white faculty and students is legitimate,” according to the lawsuit.
In a March 2019 email, according to the lawsuit, Naydan told De Piero and two other white faculty members, “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.”
The lawsuit alleges the university’s “bigotry” manifested in low expectations for students.
“They do not expect black or Hispanic students to achieve the same mastery of academic subject matters as other students and therefore insist that deficient performance must be excused,” the lawsuit contends. “Accurate assessment of abilities, if it happens to show disparate performance among different racial groups, is therefore condemned as ‘racist.'”
Naydan also “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 lawsuit adds.
Alina Wong, who was an equity administrator and named as a defendant in the lawsuit, allegedly led breathing exercises with staff, instructing white staff to hold their breath for longer periods of time than others to “‘feel the pain’ that George Floyd endured.”
Wong is no longer with the university and works as an equity vice president at Macalester College.
De Piero said the march toward this messaging in academia is rooted in “professional mobility,” and faculty who disagree but go along anyway “might be the worst people in the whole story.”
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“He is doing something extremely brave in standing up against the deleterious ideologies that have invaded academic spaces,” Leigh Ann O’Neill, managing director of legal advocacy at FAIR, told the Washington Examiner. “The unlawful discrimination he faced is a symptom of those ideologies, and they are eating away at the foundational principles of equality and open inquiry.”
Penn State declined to comment on pending litigation, and Naydan and Wong did not return a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.