Penn State Abington professor sues the university, claiming he was discriminated against for being white

A former faculty member at Pennsylvania State University’s Abington campus says the school discriminated against him for speaking out against anti-racist policies and failing to make sure students of different races received similar grades regardless of performance.

Zack K. De Piero, an assistant teaching professor of English and composition, said Penn State pressured him to ensure consistent grades for students across “color line[s],” otherwise his actions would demonstrate racism and he would be condemned as a racist, he said in a lawsuit filed in federal court last month.

De Piero, who filed multiple complaints with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging discrimination, said he and other white professors were targeted as racist “simply by virtue of teaching while ‘white,’” the lawsuit said.

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Penn State declined to respond, saying it generally does not comment on litigation.

However, a group of Penn State professors Monday began circulating an open letter, calling the lawsuit an attack on programs aimed at promoting inclusivity and equity.

“We ... stand in solidarity with our colleagues at Penn State who have embraced ongoing efforts in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB), which must be in addition to, not a substitute for, affirmative action and antiracist programs and policies,” the professors wrote. “We understand the stakes of this lawsuit, which regardless of its outcome will have a chilling effect on DEIB and antiracist initiatives throughout systems of higher education. We call upon our communities to join us in showing support for colleagues who are being unjustly targeted by groups espousing hateful ideologies.”

Among faculty signing the letter are Gary King, one of the authors of a report critical of Penn State’s handling of concerns about racism and lack of support for Black faculty, and former faculty senate chair Michael Bérubé.

King, who provided a copy of the letter, said a core group of six professors developed the letter and is seeking signatures of colleagues internally and at other colleges across the nation. When a certain threshold is reached, the letter will be made public, he said.

De Piero, a 40-year-old Bucks County resident who said he was accused of “bullying” when he questioned the university’s policies at a meeting and sanctioned for it, resigned in August 2022. Given that he was not tenured, not in a union, and on a year-to-year contract, he said in an interview, he thought the university likely would have moved to terminate him anyway.

De Piero’s lawsuit is being supported and touted by the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, (FAIR), which describes itself as “dedicated to advancing civil rights and liberties for all Americans.” The group filed an amicus brief supporting plaintiffs in their quest to overturn race-conscious admissions policies at colleges, which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of last week.

“Students instead of being presented with several different viewpoints on any given subject, we’re seeing more and more that they are given one particular view point on a topic and there are negative consequences for questioning it, disagreeing with it,or asking questions about it,” said Leigh Ann O’Neill, managing director of legal advocacy. “That’s what professor De Piero experienced.”

The Penn State professors, however, were critical of the group, which was founded in 2021, saying it tries “to paint antiracists as ‘the real racists’” and pointing to a New Yorker article about its founding, which named members of its board that included media personality Megyn Kelly and described another as an “anti-critical-race-theory activist.”

“Through divisive, fabricated arguments, this group attempts to undermine and vilify faculty members who have dedicated their careers to challenging systemic racism in higher education ...,” they wrote.

De Piero, who earned his master’s in education from Temple University and doctorate from the University of California-Santa Barbara, declined to say whether he wanted his job back. He is now employed as an assistant professor of English at Northampton Community College in the Lehigh Valley, a job he started last August. He is seeking damages of an unspecified amount.

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In the 36-page lawsuit, De Piero said Penn State pressured him to “conform to their political views” almost immediately after he began work there in 2018. He described a meeting in which his supervisor displayed an app on her phone, revealing the political affiliation of her phone contacts and “loudly expressed concern” that De Piero was not a registered Democrat. He’s an independent, according to the lawsuit.

The actions of his supervisor made him feel “extremely uncomfortable,” the suit said.

When it came to grading, university officials told De Piero “that outcomes alone — regardless of the legitimacy of methods of evaluation, mastery of subject matter, or intentions — demonstrate whether a faculty member’s actions are racist or not,” the suit said.

That policy demonstrates discrimination, according to the lawsuit.

“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 suit said. “Accurate assessment of abilities, if it happens to show disparate performance among different racial groups, is therefore condemned as ‘racist.’”

Penn State Abington, the lawsuit noted, says on its website that it is the most diverse of Penn State campuses, noting that half its 3,100 students “identify as minorities.”

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University officials are discriminating against faculty and students who meet and adhere to consistent standards, especially white faculty, the lawsuit contended.

“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,” his supervisor wrote to him and two other white faculty members on March 29, 2019, the lawsuit said. “For me, the racism is in the results if the results draw a color line.”

The lawsuit asserted that De Piero’s supervisor counted as evidence of racism “disparate outcomes on the basis of race,” even though consistent standards were applied, which she said illustrated “white supremacy.”

In the lawsuit, De Piero also takes aim at a June 2020 training session during which the leader of the training said she wanted to make Penn State’s white faculty “feel the pain” that George Floyd in 2020 endured when he was killed by a Minneapolis police officer who pushed his knee into Floyd’s neck. White faculty were asked to hold their breath longer than Black faculty to “feel the pain,” the lawsuit said.

Another training session for writing faculty in August 2020 was called “White Teachers Are a Problem.”

De Piero’s supervisor told 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 said.

On Oct. 18, 2021, De Piero questioned the university’s policies during a Zoom meeting and was told it was inappropriate for him to ask for examples on how to bring equity into his classroom, the lawsuit said. The university later said in his performance review that his behavior was “aggressive, disruptive, unprofessional and in opposition to the university’s values statement,” according to the lawsuit.

He also was told he used “intimidating body language,” which he disputed, countering that he never got up from his seat, did not point his finger in the camera, raise a fist, use profanity, insult anyone or gesture wildly.

Molaea-Rene Goodman, a 2021 Penn State Abington graduate, said she had De Piero for class in 2021 and also found him intimidating. She was not aware he had filed a lawsuit, she said.

“He was very rude,” said Goodman, who had been president of the Black Student Union. “In the times that I would speak to him, I didn’t feel much empathy or warmth.”

She said she was so upset about it that she talked to her adviser and other members of the student union, who encouraged her to report him.

But, she said, “I felt so intimidated, I never did.”

She worked hard and got an A in the class, she said. In the fall, she’ll be attending a graduate program in clinical mental health counseling at West Chester University.

In his resignation letter, De Piero wrote that he hoped to have a long career at Penn State.

“But the experiences of the past 2+ years have taught me that, at Penn State, I’m unable to stand up for essential principles — for civil rights, for workers’ rights, or for educational excellence — without professional penalties being imposed,” he wrote.