Allegations of discrimination surrounding the performance evaluation of a Georgia State University professor in 2020 while Wendy Hensel was interim provost have surfaced as she vies to become the University of Hawaii’s next president.
The then-interim dean of the Georgia State University law school told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that she wrote the performance evaluation in question, and that Hensel — now one of two finalists to become UH president — was not involved.
The first of two stories published last week by Civil Beat reported that Hensel had “targeted” the professor.
“The allegation is that Wendy had a hand in it,” said Leslie Wolf, who at the time had been appointed interim-dean by Hensel but has since returned to teaching at the law school. “Wendy was not involved. I wrote it. That was my job. I wrote the evaluation that was forwarded to the provost, which was Wendy,” Wolf said.
The origins of the allegation of discrimination go back to 2020 when Tanya Washington — a female, Black law school professor — received a “post-tenure review” evaluation that she had only met expectations and not exceeded expectations in one specific area of “scholarship.”
Washington declined the Star-Advertiser’s request for comment last week.
Washington wanted amicus briefs she had filed to be considered as “scholarship” — an issue that was hotly debated among the law school faculty at the time and has since been resolved to say that similar filings should be considered “scholarship” for post-tenure reviews.
Washington began the process of challenging her evaluation in 2021 and emailed a faculty committee report related to her review to the entire law school faculty of about 70 professors and adjuncts.
Hensel was still Georgia State’s interim provost when, at one point in 2021, Washington retained an attorney who filed “an open records request” for all of the documents related to Washington’s evaluation.
The open records request included for the first time a claim of “discrimination,” and the first reference to Hensel’s alleged involvement in the process, according to Wolf.
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Until the open records request, Wolf said, “there was no allegation of discrimination and no reference to Wendy.”
No lawsuit was ever filed, Wolf said.
Hensel moved on to the 25-campus, City University of New York system, where she currently serves as executive vice chancellor and university provost.
Wolf said her evaluation of Washington was upheld by Hensel’s successor, Nicolle Parsons Pollard, a female, Black provost who replaced Hensel in early 2022.
The stories have spread among the faculties of both UH and Georgia State, and could upend the search for the next UH president as well as the search for a new law school dean at Georgia State.
A Google search of “Georgia Law School dean” last week had listed the stories as among the top results.
On Friday morning, Wolf sent a lengthy and detailed email to the entire Georgia State law school faculty that began:
“As some of you may know, someone has shared to a Hawaii news outlet confidential information from Tanya Washington’s grievance against me regarding her post-tenure review while I was interim dean. The information may have been released to damage Wendy Hensel’s candidacy for the University of Hawaii presidency.
“… If you Google ‘Georgia State law dean,’ Wednesday’s article is the second result on the news tab.
“Up until this point, I have honored the confidentiality of the process, even when Professor Washington shared the committee report to the Law Faculty email list and to others within the University. Because information and documents have now been shared with a news outlet, I feel compelled to clarify some key information.”
Despite disagreements at the time over whether amicus briefs should be considered “scholarship,” Wolf wrote in her Friday email that the “post-tenure committee … and I concluded that Professor Washington’s scholarship met expectations. The faculty has since adopted an explicit policy that amicus briefs are scholarship.
“… Finally, it is important to know the faculty grievance committee made recommendations to (then interim) Provost Parsons-Pollard. Upon receiving it, Provost Parsons-Pollard rejected the committee’s finding that I acted arbitrarily and capriciously either in categorizing the amicus briefs as service to the profession instead of scholarship or in not including all Professor Washington’s achievements in my report. Provost Parsons-Pollard’s decision was affirmed by the President on appeal.
“I have let the dean search co-chair, Kerry Heywood, know that this story is coming up in Google searches related to the dean so that the search consultants can be prepared for any inquiries.”
In an op-ed column submitted to the Star-Advertiser’s opinion section on Friday, Hensel began:
“A few days ago, two articles were published claiming there is evidence that I engaged in discrimination and retaliation against a Black law professor nearly five years ago. Given the stakes in the search for the next President of the University of Hawai‘i, I believe the community deserves to hear the truth directly from me.
“… I have never been the subject of a discrimination or retaliation investigation, and no one has ever filed a complaint of discrimination or retaliation against me. This reality could have been easily verified with a call to Georgia State University before publishing the article. No such attempt was made. There are many simultaneous agendas in play in the search for the next President, and not all of them are about the best interests of the University of Hawai‘i.
“The article’s claims are based on a faculty grievance that was filed against an interim dean I appointed. I did not participate in the post-tenure review, I was not named as a party in the grievance, and my name only appears once in the 35-page decision by the committee in reference to a policy passed while I was dean.”
Hensel wrote that the initial article failed to “reveal that the provost appointed after I left GSU overturned the faculty’s conclusion on appeal, and the president agreed with her decision. Both administrators happen to be Black.”
Hensel, without naming her, said that Washington “publicly questioned my supposed intent to appoint my white colleague friend as the next dean.”
As provost, Hensel wrote that, “I launched a national search for the next dean. That search resulted in my recommendation and placement of the first Black dean of the law school. Again, these facts are not mentioned in the article yet can easily be found online.
“Importantly, even in the internet age, such unchecked assertions do not qualify as ‘evidence’ as suggested in the article. It also is notable but not mentioned that the same professor who filed the grievance about post-tenure review following the request did not file anything against me.”
