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Provost wanted ‘white faculty to “feel the pain” that George Floyd endured,’ lawsuit alleges
Oral arguments are scheduled for Thursday in Zack De Piero’s lawsuit against Pennsylvania State University, alleging the public institution subjected him to a racially hostile work environment and retaliated against him after he objected to diversity trainings.
De Piero, a former English professor at the public university’s Abington campus, filed the lawsuit in 2023. Mountain States Legal Foundation Senior Attorney James Kerwin, who is representing De Piero, told The College Fix the case is scheduled to be argued at the Third Circuit Court of Appeals this Thursday.
“We are confident the court of appeals will reverse the lower court’s erroneous decision and reinstate Professor De Piero’s lawsuit,” Kerwin said in a recent email.
A district court dismissed the professor’s case last year, ruling that De Piero did not present “sufficient evidence” to support his First Amendment claims. However, he and his attorneys appealed.
The appeal argues that the lower court erred by failing to properly recognize that Penn State’s alleged actions could constitute unlawful discrimination, retaliation, and violations of De Piero’s constitutional rights.
“Penn State created an environment rife with discrimination, and it violated the law,” Kerwin told The Fix.
“Penn State told its employees that they were incapable of doing their jobs if they had ‘white bodies.’ It told students that they couldn’t perform up to ‘white’ standards unless they came from certain backgrounds,” he said.
When The Fix reached out to Penn State’s media relations office, it responded via email that the university does not comment on pending litigation.
The lawsuit alleges Penn State’s diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings and race-based grading practices created a hostile work environment and amounted to racial discrimination.
De Piero, who is white, claimed that certain trainings and communications portrayed white faculty negatively and pressured instructors to adopt race-based viewpoints in teaching, which he argued amounted to racial discrimination and retaliation when he objected.
According to the lawsuit, he also was “individually singled out for ridicule and humiliation because of the color of his skin.”
The case alleges former Assistant Provost for Educational Equity Alina Wong “expressed her intention to cause Penn State’s white faculty to ‘feel the pain’ that George Floyd endured” during a 2020 video conference with faculty, according to the lawsuit.
The provost allegedly “led the faculty in a breathing exercise in which she instructed the ‘White and non-Black people of color to hold it just a little longer — to feel the pain.’”
De Piero told The Fix in a previous interview that faculty had to attend these types of DEI meetings if they wanted to “maintain good standing with the college.”
“Antiracist Writing Program meetings” included sessions called “White Teachers are a Problem,” “How to be an Antiracist,” and “The Myth of the Colorblind Classroom: White Instructors Confront White Privilege,” De Piero said.
De Piero alleged that after he raised concerns about these programs, he was criticized by administrators, received negative evaluations, and experienced workplace hostility that eventually forced him to resign in 2022.
Penn State also is facing a second lawsuit, filed earlier this year, in connection to its DEI practices.
A winemaking scholar in the university’s extension program alleges she was denied a promotion because she didn’t “demonstrate sufficient ideological commitment to the University’s prescribed DEI orthodoxy,” The Fix reported.
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