Court: Firing for Poor Performance, Not Racism

A professor who was hired based on her race has lost an anti-discrimination lawsuit in which she claimed she was fired based on her race.

The University of New Hampshire hired Roslyn Chavda during a hiring freeze, then fired her after she received poor performance reviews and failed to publish in scholarly journals.

In the court opinion, New Hampshire district judge Laynda McCafferty stated that criticizing an employee for poor work performance is not discrimination.

“Although she refers to ‘venom’ hurled by her colleagues, the only venom of which she provides any evidence consists of comments about her deficiencies in teaching, scholarship, and interactions with colleagues in the department,” McCafferty wrote.

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“UNH was in the midst of a hiring freeze. However, the department was able to get around the freeze, and hire Chavda, because of her race and UNH’s ongoing efforts to enhance racial diversity on campus,” she wrote.

Despite this, Chavda insisted that the work environment at UNH was a hostile place where no one helped her with teaching or publishing–all because she was a pregnant black woman. But she also admitted that she had “no evidence” to support this claim.

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