(Campus Reform)—The Liberty Justice Center recently filed a lawsuit against the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), alleging that a professor was fired because he criticized the school’s hiring practices, which the professor believes are racially discriminatory.
The federal lawsuit, which was filed on Feb. 10 in the Eastern Division of the Northern District of Illinois, asserts that the school administration violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment when it terminated Professor Stephen Kleinschmit.
While he was at UIC, Kleinschmit “observed that multiple hiring and funding programs were either a) explicitly designed to use race as a qualification in hiring decisions or b) being subverted to favor nonwhite applicants and faculty,” according to the lawsuit.
The document asserts that when Kleinschmit spoke out about the allegedly discriminatory hiring practices, the school administration terminated his contract.
“When he complained about this unlawful behavior, he was terminated—ostensibly due to budget cuts, yet the University retained faculty hired under a non-competitive, racially preferential hiring program, and soon after advertised a new job opening in his old department stating ‘members of a recognized underrepresented group are particularly encouraged to apply,’” the complaint says.
Kleinschmit has a Ph.D. in Public Administration and was a professor in the school’s Department of Public Policy, Management, and Analytics until he was fired in 2023.
Among other specific allegations, the complaint asserts that UIC required Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) statements in hiring. The lawsuit additionally accuses the administration of incorporating the race-conscious statements “into departmental norms and guidelines for promotion and tenure.”
The 31-page lawsuit also gives other examples of allegedly racially discriminatory school policies.
“The University Faculty Senate on July 29, 2020 released the UIC Senate Statement on Black Lives Matter, which asked the white faculty and administrators to ‘acknowledge their white privilege and power, and to commit to take action against systematic racism through anti-racist action,’” the lawsuit explains.
In a statement about the lawsuit, Liberty Justice Center Senior Counsel Reilly Stephens called UIC’s hiring practices “blatantly” illegal.
“The University of Illinois Chicago repeatedly engaged in blatant acts of racial discrimination, then added illegal retaliation to the mix to avoid accountability for its unlawful behavior,” Stephens asserted in a press release. “These actions are unacceptable violations of the right to equal protection under the law, and we urge the court to put a stop to it immediately.”
Campus Reform has contacted the University of Illinois Chicago for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.