Ex-Elon prof doubles down on racism claim
Isaac Groves Times-News
Former Elon University associate professor Michael Rodriguez fired back at the university's charge that he was never qualified or recommended for advancement, and brings out the statements of former colleagues to back his claims, which include discrimination.
Rodriguez charges the university discriminated against him because he is Hispanic — specifically Puerto Rican — paying him less than it paid his white peers, refusing him tenure and letting his contract expire.
One supporting affidavit in Rodriguez's most recent filing, from former business school Dean Mary Gowan, countered the sworn statement of Steven House, Elon provost and executive vice president, that the university's promotions and tenure committee didn't recommended that Rodriguez be offered tenure — a central point in his discrimination suit.
A year into a lawsuit charging national-origin discrimination, a hostile work environment and retaliation by the leadership of the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, Rodriguez is fighting the university's effort to get his suit tossed out of federal court.
Starting out an assistant professor in the business school in 2009, Rodriguez was hired also as faculty director of the Chandler Family Professional Sales Center in 2012. He applied for tenure in the 2014–15 academic year, which was denied, and in April 2015, Elon took his faculty director job and told him his contract would not be renewed after one more year.
Rodriguez's response to the university's November motion for summary judgment, filed last week in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, includes thousands of pages of affidavits and depositions — most of them from Rodriguez himself, but about 900 pages from Gowan.
Gowan was dean of the business school from 2007 to 2011. According to her, not only was Rodriguez qualified and deserving of a tenured position, but members of the promotions and tenure committee voted 5–3 to recommend Rodriguez for tenure. According to House's affidavit, filed in November to support the university's motion, "I received 'no' recommendations from both the committee and the appropriate dean, Dean Raghu Tadipalli, for Rodriguez."
According to Gowan's statement, differing recommendations from the committee and the dean would have led to a meeting with the dean, provost and committee members to resolve the difference, "whereby the dean could convince the parties to vote against Dr. Rodriguez."
Gowan also states that a less qualified white faculty member was promoted while Rodriguez was passed over.
Rodriguez claims the dean and Associate Dean Bill Burpitt "characterized him as a 'bad apple' because of his complaints about harassment, diversity and unfair treatment by administration at Elon."
While at the university, according to Rodriguez, he complained as a member of a faculty diversity committee that the faculty was not racially diverse, and members were often prejudiced against non-Caucasians — criticism that was not well received, he said. Also he complained that his department chair used racially insensitive language with a black student, asking him whether he had played basketball. He said he spoke one-one-one with several colleagues, especially other minorities and women, about the harassment he and they received from administrators and how best to address it without losing a chance at advancement.
Among his complaints, is that the university sought to replace Rodriguez with a white man. In another affidavit, former business school instructor Randy Moser, who is white, states Rodriguez's department Chair Coleman Rich contacted him about taking on the director's job at the sales center the month before Rodriguez lost that job.
The university declined to comment for this story Wednesday, citing its policy on ongoing litigation.
Reporter Isaac Groves can be reached at igroves@thetimesnews.com or 336-506-3045. Follow him on Twitter at @tnigroves.