Pitt’s Allergic Reaction to Argument

“Were you aware of what Norm Wang wrote?” Assistant professor Amber Johnson asked in a terse email to her colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh. “I find his White Paper offensive.”

     In an elite university committed to advancing “diversity,” “racial equity,” and “affirmative action,” Johnson’s email inflamed an institutional immune system. Within hours, every high-ranking official at Pitt was aware of an academic article that Professor Norman Wang had published in the Journal of the American Heart Association months before, criticizing the use of racial preferences in medical school education. By the next day, faculty and administrators were coordinating a response, and it wasn’t reasoned or pretty.

     Officials quickly devised a multi-pronged strategy to discredit Wang’s study and punish him professionally. First, they removed Wang as the director of a prestigious cardiac fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and prohibited him from speaking with any students, residents, or fellows. Next, they sent a letter, signed by Pitt faculty, including the dean of the school of medicine, asking the journal to retract Wang’s article for mishandling sources.

     Since our last update, CIR amended Dr. Wang’s free speech lawsuit to allege that the university violated federal law by retaliating against him for calling out its illegal racial preference policies. The civil rights retaliation claim couldn’t be filed until it was reviewed by both federal and state civil rights agencies; earlier this year, they both issued “right to sue letters” to Dr. Wang, and CIR immediately added the new claim to his lawsuit.

     In depositions this fall, Professor Kathryn Berlacher and Cardiology Division Chief Samir Saba were quick to reject any suggestion that Pitt uses race preferences in its admissions and hiring policies, but emails uncovered by CIR during discovery prove otherwise. According to Saba, Wang’s paper was particularly dangerous because his criticisms of affirmative action “undermine the work many of us have been doing at our respective institutions.” Explaining the university’s actions concerning Dr. Wang, Mark Gladwin wrote “we firmly ascribe to and believe in…progressive and affirmative recruitment of a diverse workforce.”

     Unsurprisingly, Pitt has tried to suppress views that suggest that its own diversity policies violate federal law. Pitt’s response to Wang’s article reflects a common attitude in elite universities throughout the country, which are increasingly allergic to good faith debates about racial equity initiatives.

     Following the Supreme Court’s recent decision ending the use of race preferences in academic admissions, many university leaders have declared their intention to circumvent the decision. With widespread resistance to the constitutional principle of non-discrimination, it is critically important that we set a precedent protecting the rights of dissenting professors like Norman Wang who have experienced firsthand how universities pursue their unlawful agendas.