A white professor who was fired from a “historically black” college specifically for being white has won a $4.85 million verdict.
A Missouri appeals court upheld the verdict against Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis. Elizabeth Wilkins filed the lawsuit after she was terminated in 2010 for “inappropriate activities” despite always receiving positive reviews.
The smoking gun: One of Wilkins’ supervisors, Dr. Latisha Smith, repeatedly proclaimed her belief in “Black Power” and wanting to make the college “blacker” in several emails. Despite orders from the court to preserve the emails, they were deleted.
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“During discovery, the trial court ordered the Board [of Regents] to preserve Dr. Smith’s email account,” Judge Kurt Odenwald wrote for the three-judge panel, CourtHouseNews reports.
“In violation of the order, the Board deleted Dr. Smith’s email account. Because of this violation, the trial court ruled, as a sanction, that the following allegations were deemed admitted: Dr. Smith’s email account contained statements expressing her desire to make the Teacher Education Department ‘blacker’ and that she recommended terminating Wilkins’s employment.”
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Writing for the three-court panel, Judge Kurt Odenwald wrote that there was no other reason why Wilkins should have been fired.
“The record is absolutely void of any evidence to suggest that Wilkins was unsuited for her position or that she was at risk of being lawfully terminated,” Odenwald wrote. “Yet, after her termination for ‘inappropriate activities,’ Wilkins testified that her academic reputation was ruined, that HSSU placed a letter alleging misconduct into her employment file, and that she believed she could not receive the necessary recommendations for subsequent employment. Unexpectedly thrust into the job market, the record reflects that Wilkins was interested in, and searched for, similar teaching positions at colleges or universities in the area. However, Wilkins was unable to find such a job within commuting distance of St. Louis.”
Harris-Stowe is a small public college in midtown St. Louis. It has about 1,300 undergraduate students and annual tuition is about $7,500 per year.
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Dr. Smith has since been fired and they have rearranged the decks on the failing school.
Other than that, the school had no comment.
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