White professor files lawsuit against Penn State for ‘racially hostile environment’

A white former assistant teaching professor has filed a lawsuit against Penn State, alleging the university racially discriminated and retaliated against him until his resignation in August 2022.

Zack De Piero, 40, served as an assistant teaching professor of English and Composition at Penn State-Abington from 2018 to 2022. During that time, he said he felt pressured by the administration to grade certain minorities easier, and he also objected to meetings and exercises seemingly centered on critical race theory, where white faculty were made to feel “terrible.” Once he reported what he perceived as discrimination, he believed university officials retaliated by filing a bullying and harassment complaint against him, in addition to handing him lower scores on his subsequent annual performance review.

About half of Penn State-Abington’s student population identifies as minorities. The commonwealth campus is Penn State’s most diverse campus.

“Not only was Penn State deliberately indifferent to the racially hostile environment for De Piero, Penn State actively treated De Piero as the problem, suggesting mental health treatment and disciplining him for bullying when he dared to complain,” the lawsuit read. “As a result, De Piero’s only option to escape the hostile environment was to leave Penn State.”

According to the lawsuit, two of De Piero’s superiors — Liliana Naydan, chair of the English Department and Writing Program coordinator; and Friederike Baer, division head of Arts & Humanities — told the non-tenure line faculty member that student outcomes alone (i.e. grades) demonstrated whether a faculty member was racist. In a March 2019 email, De Piero said Naydan wrote, “For me, the racism is in the results if the results draw a color line.”

“Penn State pressured De Piero to ensure consistent grades for students across ‘color line(s),’ otherwise his actions would demonstrate racism and he would be condemned as a racist,” the lawsuit read.

De Piero is suing Naydan, Baer and seven other administrators and university employees — including Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi — in addition to the university itself and 30 members of the board of trustees. The lawsuit was filed earlier this month in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

In an email to the CDT, the university largely declined to comment about De Piero’s allegations or its approach to race and grading.

“Penn State does not generally comment on pending litigation,” spokesperson Lisa Powers wrote. “The university has repeatedly affirmed its active and ongoing commitment to diversity and equity, and made clear its desire to create an inclusive and respectful environment in which to live, work and study.”

After the May 2020 death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by Minneapolis police, De Piero said the university’s antiracist activism “reached a new fever pitch.” In a June 2020 Zoom meeting — “Conversation on Racial Climate” — De Piero took exception when he said another administrator 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.”

Later that month, Aneesah Smith — PSU-Abington’s director of diversity, equity and inclusion — allegedly sent an email to all faculty and staff that said, “Black and Brown people are calling on white people” to “stop being afraid of your own internalized white supremacy.” De Piero also said, at different times, faculty were told white supremacy exists in language itself and reverse racism isn’t racism — in addition to having to watch a presentation titled, “White Teachers are a Problem.”

“The Individual Defendants, including but not limited to Naydan, condemned faculty in general and De Piero specifically for teaching while ‘white,’” the lawsuit read. “At Penn State, condemning faculty on the basis of race counts as demonstrating a commitment to ‘antiracism.’”

In April 2021, De Piero said he disclosed “numerous racially discriminatory incidents” involving Naydan, his direct supervisor, to division head Baer. He also filed a similar complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and, five months later, also filed a Bias Report with the university’s Affirmative Action Office.

When De Piero met with the associate director of the Affirmative Action Office, De Piero said he was told, “There is a problem with the white race” and was given a phone number to seek mental health support. A few weeks later, he penned an opinion piece in Gannett-related media outlets to express his concerns on CRT. And, weeks later, administrators led a meeting for writing faculty based on a reading titled, “The Myth of the Colorblind Writing Classroom: White Instructors Confront White Privilege in Their Classrooms.”

De Piero said during that meeting he felt singled out and targeted, and Naydan said their conversation caused her to feel “uncomfortable,” per the lawsuit. Naydan and a separate assistant teaching professor then filed a “retaliatory” complaint against De Piero for bullying and harassment, De Piero said. In December 2021, De Piero filed his second complaint — about both discrimination and retaliation — to two governmental agencies.

Penn State’s Affirmative Action Office ultimately found De Piero was not discriminated against, but that he did bully his colleagues. That remains part of De Piero’s employment record, which he’s trying to get expunged.

In June 2022, De Piero received his annual performance evaluation and disagreed with the lower scores. He said the service component of his work was rated only as “fair to good,” the equivalent of a 2 on a 5-point scale, when he used to receive scores more in line with a 4 out of 5. He resigned less than two months later.

“I envisioned a long, productive career at Penn State as a composition instructor and educational researcher, 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,” De Piero wrote in his resignation letter. “I will now turn my attention to advocating for these principles from outside the Penn State University system.”

De Piero, who earned his doctorate in 2017 from UC Santa Barbara, currently works as an assistant professor of English at Northampton Community College in the Lehigh Valley.

De Piero is seeking damages in an amount to be proven at trial. No trial date has yet been set.