By Wendy Hensel

A few days ago, two articles were published on an online news platform claiming 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 Hawaii, I believe the community deserves to hear the truth directly from me.

I have purposely spent my career at two of the most diverse public universities in the country. I am an employment discrimination lawyer by training, and I have spent my 25-year career in higher education fighting for civil rights in my teaching and scholarship.

I have a demonstrable record of creating highly diverse teams and equitable environments as an administrator. I care deeply about this work — it is fundamental to who I am both personally and professionally.

Many people have reached out to me about the articles seeking clarification. They found the stories confusing, which is understandable. Fortunately, the critical facts are simple: 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.

The articles’ claims are based on a faculty grievance that was filed against an interim dean I appointed. The faculty committee did not evaluate a claim of discrimination or retaliation, but instead the question of whether the interim dean’s conclusion in the professor’s five-year post-tenure job review — that multi- authored amicus briefs filed with the Supreme Court do not “count” as scholarship — was arbitrary and capricious.

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.

While the original article notes the 3-2 faculty decision that the briefs should have counted, it does not 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.

One article cited allegations made by the same professor in an open records request. There is a statement in that request suggesting that I discriminated and retaliated against the professor because she publicly questioned my supposed intent to appoint my white colleague friend as the next dean.

In fact, that colleague — a distinguished scholar and highly qualified administrator of the nation’s leading program in health law — served in a temporary capacity as interim dean because I was elevated to interim provost. Once my position became permanent, 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.

To be clear, people can and often do say anything in open records requests, and there is no mechanism to respond.

Importantly, even in the internet age, such unchecked assertions do not qualify as “evidence,” as suggested in the initial article. It also is notable that the same professor who filed the grievance about post-tenure review following the request did not file anything against me.

As I have said repeatedly in recent open forums here, the kuleana of the next UH president is enormous. The community rightly has an interest in the outcome of this search, and candidates should be fully vetted on their records and vision. At the same time, candidates who open themselves to such scrutiny should be treated fairly.

As an administrator in the public eye, I make hard decisions every day, as any good leader must. It has cost me friendships, including the one of more than 20 years I had with the professor who filed the grievance. I have earned my reputation as someone who acts with integrity, and will do the right thing for the people I serve. Whether or not my future is as the next president of Hawaii’s great university, I will continue to do so.

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NO BROOKS: New York Times columnist David Brooks is not running today.

Wendy Hensel, provost of the City University of New York, is one of two finalists for University of Hawaii president. The other finalist is Julian Vasquez Heilig, vice president of academic affairs at Western Michigan University.