Wheelock College Professors Gail Dines (@GailDines) and Eric Silverman (@EKSilverman) are claiming that discrimination and anti-semitism have ruined their careers. Tuesday night, the professors joined Greater Boston’s Jim Braude to discuss the federal workplace discrimination complaints they've filed against the college, as well as Wheelock's response.
Professors Gail Dines and Eric Silverman say they were subjected to anti-Semitic discrimination by the Wheelock administration after writing a letter alleging a lack of Jewish perspective on campus; the pair wrote the letter, along with five of their colleagues, in 2014.
“The letter celebrated the fact that there was going to be the first formal event, campus-wide, that did involve Jews and ‘Jewish-ness’, and so we celebrated that. It was really the first time Jews had been invited by the institution as full-participants in our diversity,” says Silverman.
In the letter, faculty members indicated that there should be a much greater inclusion of Jewish culture in the school’s diversity initiative; Silverman feels that it was this clause that kicked-off discrimination against Jewish faculty. In their statements to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Dines and Silverman say Wheelock responded to the letter with “fury and retaliation.”
Dines says the retaliation began last April, when she was accused of racism and sexism, specifically allegations that she used the N-word in one of her classes. Dines is a professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies, and says she only used derogatory language in “discussion of the meaning of the word sociologically, which is what you do in a scholarly classroom”. Three weeks later, Dines was informed that Wheelock would bring in an external investigator to evaluate the validity of the claims against her.
Silverman reports a similar experience. “There were allegedly accusations made that I was using the N-word in class, which I personally do not do, although we discussed the topic as we do many derogatory terms for other ethnic groups. I was also told that was going to be an external investigator,” Silverman says. Both Dines and Silverman say they were confused by the accusations made against them, but were not privy to details of the investigation.
In addition to the racial allegations, Silverman says there is other instances where he felt the College discriminated against him in response to the letter.
Silverman contents he was “publically berated” by the chief diversity officer for the tone of the letter, and that “President [Jackie Jenkins-Scott] recently at a diversity council meeting slapped the table and said that ‘Eric Silverman would not teach alone again...would not teach my American Identities course, and would not be chair next year again,’” says Silverman.
Dines says that even while other faculty members privately support the anti-Semitic claims, they are afraid to speak out in support of her and Silverman’s discrimination claims. “If [Wheelock College] is going to come after us, after two fully-tenured professors, I think other people are scared; are they next?” Says Dines.
If the allegations are true, what’s the agenda—what does Wheelock College gain from discriminating against their Jewish faculty? For her part, Dines is baffled.
“That letter must have upset [Wheelock] in a way that neither one of us can figure out,” says Dines. “It was not written in an abusive tone, and it was inviting more diversity. What we were saying is that we respect this diversity, and we want to open it up, not close it down.”
Silverman adds that the purpose of the letter was not the challenge the college’s diversity initiatives. “We support [diversity], and all of our teachings and professional writings will attest to that,” says Silverman. Instead, the letter was meant to call attention to Wheelock’s failure to include a Jewish perspective in their diversity programming.
Regarding their hopes for the outcome of their complaints with the EEOC, Silverman says, “we want to make ourselves, our reputation, and the college whole.”
Wheelock College has not offered to meet with Dines, Silverman, or their attorneys. Representatives from Wheelock College declined an invitation to join Greater Boston, and instead submitted a statement saying it “disagrees strongly with the allegations made in the actions recently filed against the College.”
