You Actually Won't Believe Who Is Suing DePaul Law School For Discrimination

I did not see this one coming.

After law professor Donald Hermann decided to use racial slurs in his classroom — repeatedly — under the flimsy pretext that, without it, black students would never be able to understand racism in the real world, we probably should have expected a lawsuit charging the school with fostering a hostile, discriminatory environment.

But who would be the plaintiff?

Perhaps the students, who had to sit through Hermann’s wildly inappropriate and insulting (to the extent his premise is that college graduates couldn’t understand a “fighting words” lesson unless he goes full Southern Sheriff) lectures? Or maybe Professor Hermann himself, claiming that the student outcry over his antics suppressed his academic freedom and hurt his precious feelings.

No, it’s Professor Terry Smith, last seen playing the role of “my black friend doesn’t have a problem with it” in a Chicago Sun-Times piece where he parroted Professor Hermann’s vacuous defenses of cribbing his lesson plans from Hooked On Racism. This is something Smith actually said this week about the students who raised their concerns about Hermann:

“I think that their reaction is prompted by: A) A sense of entitlement that they should not be offended or provoked in the classroom. And, B) [it] represents something of a double standard in which many of the students who are complaining regularly go to movies where the N-word is regularly used where there’s no teaching context for it…. Now in the classroom where there’s a teaching justification, suddenly they’re upset by it. I find that to be hypocritical.”

First of all, when a professor says their job is to offend students, they’re telling you, “I’m a terrible teacher.” It’s just a lazy approach deployed by hack professors so incapable of genuinely engaging their students that they resort to this stuff.

But the real point is that Professor Smith saw a palpable hostile environment develop within the school and rather than join the protest or even act as a mediator, he went to the local paper to aid the public relations effort to undermine and belittle the concerns of minority students. Obviously, Professor Smith is entitled to his opinion about how educators should conduct themselves, but having an opinion and putting that opinion in the newspaper are two different things.

Sponsored

And yet somehow, on the heels of publicly undermining minority students and repeating the ludicrous stance that there’s any justification for a professional to be using racial epithets, now Professor Smith is bringing his claims that DePaul is a hostile work environment. From Law360:

In his seven-count complaint, Smith alleges he has been repeatedly blocked from university leadership in retaliation for speaking up for other faculty and students of color and generally being outspoken about racial issues. In his complaint, Smith laid out several situations in which he alleged he was retaliated against for his activism within the law school and university since his hiring in 2010. Smith now faces termination.

“As a result of his participation in these causes and his association with Professor Sumi Cho (a tenured full professor of Asian descent at the law school who also advocates for racial diversity and who opposes discriminatory practices at the law school and DePaul generally), he has suffered retaliation by administrators and faculty at the law school and at DePaul more broadly,” the complaint said. “Manifestations of this backlash include systemic and ongoing exclusion from committee and administrative posts both within the law school and the broader university [and] professional ostracization by his colleagues at the law school.”

Perhaps Professor Smith has suffered discrimination at DePaul. Perhaps his career has been hindered for years by a hostile work environment. But it just feels so hollow to be pointing out all the struggles he’s faced for allegedly standing up for diversity at the school days after he publicly derided minority students asking only to be free of gratuitous racial taunting. It’s just hard to wrap one’s head around “this school has a serious diversity problems… but the capricious use of racial slurs isn’t one of them.”

It may not bear on his specific claims, but holistically, if he thinks the school has a problem with diversity, maybe he should consider that it might be because it’s an institution with professors frighteningly quick to dismiss the concerns of minority students.

(Professor Smith’s complaint is available on the next page…)

Sponsored

DePaul Law Prof Says Fighting Racism Hurt His Career [Law360]

Earlier: Law Professor Drops Racial Slur In Class Because Otherwise How Will Black Students Ever Learn About Racism?


HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.