The Berkeley Beacon

Issue date: 2/19/09 Section: News

Since 1880, one black professor has earned tenure at Emerson without suing the college and enduring a years-long lawsuit: Performing Arts Professor Robbie McCauley, who was tenured in 2007. Before-and now after-her promotion, Emerson's history with multicultural tenure-track professors has been marred by acrimonious departures and litigious retention.

The trend began in 1977 when Mike Brown-the first black professor to seek tenure at Emerson-sued the college, alleging discrimination in a case he won in 1979.

More than a decade later, Cape Verdean film Professor Claire Andrade-Watkins waged a similar battle, ultimately winning tenure after a three-year lawsuit. It continued this year, as professors Dr. Roger House and Pierre Desir have prepared complaints with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Since 1996, 13 such complaints have been filed by Emerson faculty, students and employees.

Some of those suits have been as innocuous as the one made by the student who believed her poor grade (C+) in a class was based on her nationality (Canadian). Others, like House and Desir, have leveled more serious accusations. The college has maintained, in every case, that race has never affected tenure decisions.

Through Vice President of Public Affairs David Rosen, the administration declined to comment further. President Jacqueline Liebergott, who, along with the Board of Trustees, has the final world on all tenure decisions, wrote in an e-mail it would be inappropriate to comment on pending MCAD legal action.

But some faculty members, including Jerry Lanson, a journalism professor and former department chair, said the academic world can be plagued with institutional racism.
"What I think sometimes can happen in the world of academics in general terms-and I want to stress general-both in the hiring process, they look for people like themselves, and in the review process, they look for people who contribute in ways familiar to them," said Lanson, who co-led the Faculty Campus Dialogues on Race in 2006, in an interview last week.

A Beacon investigation uncovered seven cases of professors who felt, or whose colleagues felt, they were wrongfully denied tenure because of their race or ethnicity since 1977. Some of the professors formally fought back, others quietly moved on to other institutions, but only Brown and Andrade-Watkins remain at Emerson. These are their stories so far.

Professors Roger House and Pierre Desir, denied tenure 2008
House and Desir were the only black professors up for tenure-along with three white professors who were tenured-last May. In June, House, a history professor in the journalism department, filed a complaint with MCAD alleging his application was rejected based on his race. Desir, a visual and media arts professor, said he plans to file in the coming weeks.

Both were rejected by the deans of their school after winning approval from their departments' faculty and chairs, according to school officials involved in the decision process.

"There's this façade of diversity," House said in an interview with The Beacon last week. "But the ultimate standard is their treatment of the black male. You can't raise the bar higher for one applicant than another."

Both complaints will be investigated by the state's Equal Employment Opportunity Council.

Professor Robbie McCauley, tenured 2007

Performing Arts professor McCauley was the college's first black professor to be granted tenure without a lawsuit. McCauley is an OBIE Award-winning playwright and a nationally recognized performance artist and director.

Since she was hired in 2001, McCauley, who did not immediately return requests for comment, has acted and directed in Emerson plays dealing with the issue of race, including "Anne and Emmett," about an imagined meeting between Anne Frank and Emmett Till, both teenage victims of racism.

In 2005, she called diversity at Emerson "dismal" following remarks by then-Dean of Communications Stuart Sigman's at a Hurricane Katrina forum that were perceived as racist.

"If you don't move forward, then the society remains in a position where, at top institutions, white privilege is considered ok," she told The Beacon in 2005.

Professor Uppinder Mehan, denied tenure 2004
Mehan, an Indian-American and former writing, literature and publishing professor at Emerson was the only non-white faculty member in his department when he was denied tenure, he said. He never fought back against the decision, but former colleagues said he was "singed."

"It was pretty homogenous," he said in a telephone interview from Victoria, Texas where he now works at the University of Houston.

Mehan would not speculate on the role his nationality played in the decision, but he said the standards for tenure rose after he was hired on the tenure track. At the time, a professor needed to publish a set number of articles to receive tenure, Mehan said. When he reached that bar, he was told he needed to publish another book. He'd already published one, "So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy," but was told the tome didn't count toward his tenure.

"There was one set of standards when I came in and another set when I came up for tenure," Mehan said. "I never did get the official version on what happened."

Professor Andrew Millington, denied tenure 2003
When the college denied tenure to film professor Millington, he was the only other black professor in the visual and media arts department beside Andrade-Watkins. Millington was forced to leave the college a year later and now works at Howard University, a historically black institution in Washington, D.C. It's a career choice he said he made consciously after working in an environment as uniformly white as Emerson.

"There are certain means of evaluation that don't give the same response a white professor would have," he said in an interview with The Beacon.

Millington never filed a complaint with MCAD.

Professor Ali Kanso El-Ghori, denied tenure, 2000
Former marketing professor El-Ghori was denied tenure, he alleged in an MCAD complaint, based on his being the college's only Arab-Muslim faculty member at the time. His dismissal marked the first time in at least 20 years the communication chair did not retain a faculty member who was unanimously recommended by the Department of Promotion and Tenure Committee, according to a 2001 Beacon article.

El-Ghori's discrimination complaint against Emerson was dismissed in May 2003, according to Barbara Green, spokesperson for the MCAD. Green said the commission could not find sufficient evidence that Emerson discriminated against El-Ghori based on his national origin and religion. El-Ghori could have appealed, but records show he did not.

"That's not to say that they found that Emerson followed all procedures, but its not saying they violated any statutes either," Green said in a telephone interview.

El-Ghori published four articles and one book chapter, according to the Faculty Accomplishments booklet published by the college that year. Only one other member of the department is credited with the same standard of work, The Beacon reported at the time. Calls and e-mails to El-Ghori's office at the University of Texas at San Antonio were not immediately returned.

Professor Claire Andrade-Watkins, denied tenure 1990, reinstated 1993
Almost two decades ago, film professor Andrade-Watkins was on track to become the second black professor to receive tenure, but like Brown, she had to sue Emerson to get it.

When she was hired in 1982, the standards for tenure required seven published articles and a record of outstanding community service, she said. Andrade-Watkins was heavily involved in the Boston and Roxbury film community and had also hosted a large local African film festival. When she applied for tenure, the college requested she publish more articles.

"The criteria kept changing as I came up for tenure," she said. "The rules kept changing."

She then decided to sue Emerson, ultimately winning her case in 1993 after the court decided that her work should be evaluated by a binding neutral panel, which ruled in her favor.

"Emerson, in my opinion, back then, was racist," she said. "I was doing 'That Black Stuff' and the gatekeepers at the time were very narrow, very Euro-based, with a dogmatic approach. It's like you're valuable but you're not valued."

When Desir leaves in May, Andrade-Watkins will be the only full-time black faculty member in the visual and media arts department.

"Now, the only other black person is when I go into the bathroom and look in the mirror," she said.

Professor Mike Brown, denied tenure 1977, reinstated 1979
After Brown was denied tenure in 1977, he filed a discrimination complaint with the state's EEOC, winning his case two years later to become Emerson's first tenured black professor. He was most likely the first black professor to apply for tenure, according to John Coffee, author of a book on Emerson's history called "A Century of Eloquence." However, Brown was never promoted to associate professor, a move that usually accompanied tenure, and he has never applied for promotion since. Brown, a political science and law professor, said he supports Desir and House's bids for reinstatement.

"Roger's situation is just sad to me," Brown said in an interview with The Beacon last week. "I cannot find anything specific that would suggest to me that this is prejudice, but the flip of it is I don't understand why."

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