A White English professor who resigned from Pennsylvania State University at Abington after being asked to grade minority students differently has filed a federal reverse discrimination lawsuit.
Zack K. De Piero was “individually singled out for ridicule and humiliation because of the color of his skin” during mandatory department meetings and left under pressure in August, according to the complaint filed this month in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
According to court documents, Penn State at Abington hired him in 2018 as a non-tenure-track assistant professor of English and composition. Located north of Philadelphia, Abington claims to be the most racially diverse of Penn State’s 24 campuses.
“Almost immediately upon beginning his employment at Penn State, defendants pressured DePiero to conform to their political viewpoints,” the complaint states.
According to the suit, Mr. De Piero’s department supervisor revealed faculty political affiliations on an app at a 2018 meeting and “loudly expressed concern and disbelief that [he] was not a registered Democrat.”
The complaint says the same supervisor “instructed her writing faculty to teach that White supremacy exists in language itself, and therefore, that the English language itself is ‘racist.’”
It says administrators “required that De Piero also penalize students academically on the basis of race” — for example, by lowering the grades of East Asian or Indian students who outperformed other minorities to “equalize outcomes on the basis of race.”
“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 complaint states. “Accurate assessment of abilities, if it happens to show disparate performance among different racial groups, is therefore condemned as ’racist.’”
The suit names Penn State, its Board of Trustees, its president, the Penn State at Abington chancellor and seven other current and former employees as defendants. It seeks an unspecified amount in punitive financial damages for Mr. De Piero, a registered political Independent.
Mr. De Piero, now an assistant professor of English at Pennsylvania’s Northampton Community College, has asked the federal court to rule that school officials violated his rights under the First Amendment and state and federal civil rights statutes.
“I am suing Penn State because a so-called ’anti-racist’ work environment became an openly hostile work environment,” he told The Washington Times on Thursday. “This case needs to be brought to light because it’s in the public interest.”
Penn State “does not generally comment on pending litigation,” a spokesperson for the Abington campus told The Times in an email.
The officials named as defendants in the lawsuit have not responded to requests for comment.
According to the suit, the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion website lists the following resources: “White Rage,” “White people, enough: A look at power and control” and “Me and White Supremacy.”
These materials “further disseminated racist tirades against white faculty and students on the basis of their race,” the complaint states.
The lawsuit says that when Mr. De Piero filed a bias complaint through academic channels, officials ordered him to attend anti-racist sensitivity training and suggested he might be mentally ill.
The complaint says the actions created a “hostile environment” that finally prompted Mr. De Piero, a 40-year-old former Philadelphia public school teacher, to resign.
The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, a Virginia-based network of civil liberties lawyers, is representing Mr. DePiero in court. The group’s board of advisors includes journalist Megyn Kelly, Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker and culture critic Thomas Chatterton Williams.
“If American universities are allowed to treat their students and faculty differently based on their race, then the promise of equality dissolves into nothing more than an aspiration,” Leigh Ann O’Neill, FAIR’s managing director of legal advocacy, said Thursday.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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