A former high-level DEI staffer at the University of Wisconsin has sued the school alleging she was a victim of racial discrimination. The twist here is that Rochelle Hoffman, formerly the assistant director for the Multicultural Student Services, is white.
Hoffman, in a May email to Wisconsin Sen. Patrick Testin, said the public university has become a “hostile environment,” and there are “blatant actions of racial discrimination against white folks” like herself.
“On a regular basis there are great educators that are told they shouldn’t occupy multicultural space, to check their white privilege, passed over for jobs for an outside candidate of color, and reminded they are ‘inherently racist’ because they are white,” she wrote.
What follows is a description of what happened taken from Hoffman’s lawsuit which was filed last month. First, a statement about her qualifications:
In late January 2022 Vice Chancellor Diaz appointed Rochelle Hoffman to the position of Interim Director of MSS. Diaz anticipated that Hoffman would fill the role of Interim Director of MSS at least until the permanent position was filled and that she would then move into a permanent position as Assistant Director of MSS…
Hoffman was highly qualified for the positions of Interim Director and Assistant Director of MSS. She had an undergraduate degree in Education, specializing in Urban Education, a master’s degree in education from the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, and she was currently working toward a Doctoral Degree in Education…
In Hoffman’s most recent performance reviews while she was working in BB and then MSS she was rated as “exceeds expectations” and “outstanding.”
And as is often the case in these campus incidents, it wasn’t the adults who made Hoffman’s race an issue, it was the students.
During the first Open House forum in February 2022 a student asked, “You hired a white woman as the Interim Director?” Another student asked, “Do you personally feel white staff can do as effective a job as a person of color, within a space for people of color?”
Other students said, “We don’t want white people in the MSS office”, “Our heritage months are not for the campus, they are for us only” and, “Will you hire white people?”
Similar comments were made during subsequent open house forums held March to May 2022. Students, faculty, and staff expressed that they “didn’t want white people overseeing spaces intended to serve students of color” and that they “didn’t want a white woman in charge of the MSS office” –referring to Hoffman…
In February/March 2022 the student senate adopted a resolution entitled, “In Condemnation of the Office of Multicultural Affairs and Blugold Beginnings Merger”, which in part stated there were “concerns over placing white identifying individuals in positions of interim leadership for major EDI offices”, which was a reference to Hoffman.
Eventually she was hit with an anonymous complaint. The fact that she was white made some student uncomfortable.
On June 30, 2022, an anonymous complaint was filed against Hoffman with the Office of Affirmative Action stating Hoffman’s presence made the complainant feel uncomfortable and that it was hard for her to speak openly in a space made for her.
At this point she made a complaint and, she claims, this was followed a few months later by retaliation.
On July 28, 2022, Hoffman filed a complaint of race discrimination with the Office of Affirmative Action and a month later the Human Resource Manager, Jen Steinhorst, met with Hoffman and suggested she drop or “pause” the filing noting there might be career damage if she did not. Hoffman, however, was sure she wanted to move forward with the investigation.
On September 2, 2022, just a couple of days before fall classes were to start, Hoffman was pulled off teaching her Gen 100 class without notice and told to provide her course syllabus to Maggie Jensen. This was done in retaliation for Hoffman pursuing her discrimination complaint.
The teaching assignment that was taken away was given to one of the staff members who’d been vocal about opposing her. She is now seeking unspecified compensation for lost wages and for emotional distress and damage to her career.
Of course this will have to play out in court but I don’t find it at all hard to believe that students and faculty would object to someone holding a DEI position solely on the basis of her race. In fact, I would be surprised if that wasn’t the case.
I do find myself wondering why Hoffman believed she would be treated fairly given the content of modern DEI, which is largely about identity politics and systems of oppressions that specifically and frequently identify white people as the chief oppressors. Did she think her skin color would be overlooked because she held to the same ideology? I’m genuinely curious what expectation she had as a white person in this field and why she believed she was immune.