Black prof.: my historically black university pressured me to discriminate

No workplace is safe from discriminating employees, even historically black college and universities (HBCU).

James Pearce, the Director of Graduate Studies in the Language and Literature Department, has been in charge of hiring candidates at North Carolina Central University as a department chair since 2008. However, Pearce has complained the school pressured him to use "racially discriminatory hiring practices" on non-blacks employees.

Pearce has filed two Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaints because of the alleged discrimination: one in 2010 and the second in 2014 according to ABC11.

Pearce filed the second complaint with the EEOC because he believes that he lost out on becoming the chair of the Department of Language and Literature in retaliation for his complaints.

According to the Huffington Post, three former NCCU employees are also suing NCCU for racial mistreatment and allege that Chancellor Debra Saunders-White has been misusing school funding. The three former employees are Frank Smith and Kimberly Luse, both caucasian, and Marianne Murphy, who is of Cuban descent.

"I've reprimanded people, hired people, fired people without any regard to the color of their skin," Pearce told WRAL.

Because of Pearce's tenured status, he is still employed at NCCU. He claims he has only been able to speak out thanks to the protected status his tenure affords him.

"North Carolina Central University strives to foster diversity and inclusion within our faculty, staff, and student communities...NCCU maintains nondiscriminatory policies, practices, and procedures that ensure the fair, transparent and equitable resolution of employment-related grievances and respects the right of any employee or student to file such claims," Associate Vice Chancellor Ayana Hernandez told Campus Reform.

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