Hiring Process of URI’s New President Grossly Flawed—Louis Kwame Fosu, Guest MINDSETTER™

Saturday, April 17, 2021

Professor Louis Kwame Fosu, Guest MINDSETTER

Dear Dr. Marc Parlange,

On April 12, 2021, the Board of Trustees of the University of Rhode Island (URI) announced your selection as our next President. Sadly, the announcement came as a disappointment to many members of the URI community – faculty, staff and students – who firmly believe that your selection arose from a grossly flawed, discriminatory hiring process that harms African Americans, specifically, and the diversity and inclusion efforts of the whole URI community.

I write (A) to inform you of the history of systemic racism at URI up to and including your appointment as yet another White, male President, the seriously flawed recruitment process that led to your selection, and the toxic environment and discord that you most certainly will inherit the moment you assume your new position, and (B) to implore you to rescind your acceptance.

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If you truly intend to lead URI into the future, then you should insist on a new, fair hiring process in which you re-apply, along with other candidates, and undergo evaluation by an unbiased search committee that includes African American intellectuals and experts of diverse backgrounds.

Please understand that I have no reason at this time to doubt your professional qualifications or your personal commitment to build a community at URI that values and embraces equity, diversity and inclusion, which is a publicized transformational goal for URI. But you are coming from Australia, where you may not fully appreciate the outrage that has grown on URI’s campus and in the United States more broadly following certain tragic events including the horrific death of George Floyd. A White male police officer was caught on videotape kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes as he struggled to breathe, lost consciousness and ultimately died. That police officer is on trial for murder at this very moment, at the same time that URI announced your selection over a highly qualified African American candidate. 

I am sure you can understand why many in the URI community are angered and frustrated by your appointment during this volatile time, which I view as yet another figurative asphyxiation of a Black man by the senior White leadership at URI: George Washington University Provost Brian Blake’s “death” as a candidate at URI was by an invisible, yet formidable chokehold as with other African American candidates for leadership positions at URI before him.

If you are familiar with the Diversity Think Tank and the Declaration of Diversity published on that website (SEE HERE), you will recognize that URI students of all backgrounds have denounced URI’s racist history and URI’s “dehumanizing exclusion of highly qualified African-Americans/Blacks, Latinos/Hispanics and Native Americans from positions of senior leadership and other positions throughout the university.” The students’ demands for a fair hiring process and explicit “demand that African-American Presidents from other universities are immediately included in this search process for President Dooley’s replacement,” appears to have fallen on deaf ears, as you were selected by a board of trustees and search committee that did not include a single person from the URI Africana Studies Department or other diverse intellectuals and experts and did not seriously consider alternative candidates.

Presidential candidate presentations took place on March 29 and 30, yet after (ostensibly) aggressively recruiting Dr. Blake, the URI Board of Trustees recommended you over him for hire within just one day, on April 1, 2021 (before Dr. Blake withdrew from consideration). How is it possible to make that important decision and read all feedback and comments from students, faculty, and administrators in only one day? I believe that URI already knew they would hire you, the White male candidate, even before April 1. This is the same MO I have described about every single high-level hire at URI. It is a pattern of corruption and highly offensive discrimination. It must stop with you.

 

Please also consider the following:

 (1) The African American community was not engaged in your hiring process and there was no representation on the search/selection committee even though Margo Cook and the entire Board were repeatedly informed that Dr. Vanessa Wynder Quainoo, the chair of the Africana Studies Department should be on the search/selection committee. Diversity is a critical issue in America and at URI, and the most consistently dehumanized here in America and on our campus are African Americans. We can no longer keep repeating the same flawed selection process for senior leadership that excludes significant African American presence at the table.

 

(2) There was no significant representation from the Africana Studies Department, or from African American experts who are knowledgeable about diversity and the history of racism at URI during the selection process. This must be a fair and democratic process for all—not a cover and whitewash for the repeated crowning of white URI Presidents and Provosts. You will enter here fighting our community for legitimacy because you were not selected through a legitimate or fair hiring process.

 

(3) Dr. Marc Parlange, you have no apparent history of advancing diversity significantly for African Americans. Although the metrics and statistics at your current university are different, comparable statistics at Monash University are disgraceful: The publicly available “2019 STUDENT PROFILE - Monash Overall,” for example provides that only 255 students out of the 86,753 students (only 0.3%) were of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander descent. Coming from such a homogenous university in a foreign jurisdiction it is difficult to comprehend how you could possibly be equipped to address uniquely American race issues at URI. I believe you were chosen because you are the safest white man who can be molded perfectly into this systemically racist institution and you are not equipped with the knowledge or experience to make necessary and significant changes for diversity. Compare your record to that of Dr. Blake (George Washington University) an effective transformative leader in the United States.

 

(4) The selection process included tainted members on the search/selection committee, against whom there are documented complaints of Title VII violations and racism--namely, Sean Rogers and Dean Jen Riley. Margo Cook had been informed directly in several communications that Sean Rogers was complicit in civil rights violations and cannot be on the committee, yet nothing was done in response, which deeply compromised the legitimacy of the process. Both Sean Rogers and Dean Jen Riley were moderators adding to the illegitimacy of the selection/interview process (predicted on page 13 – 15 of Amanpour April 10th letter).

 

(5) The Board of Trustees Chair Margo Cook has knowingly supported a racist hostile work environment at URI, effectively ignoring several, well-documented complaints of predatory racism and civil rights violations. Therefore, your appointment as president was not produced from a fair selection process open to all communities. It had Celia Rouse, who is not from URI and has been in the dark about many issues of racism as was Dr. Blake, who withdrew on April 10th after he received my email (you also received my email). Dr. Blake withdrew because I believe he realized he was being used as a prop for you, the white candidate, as I also predicted in my Amanpour letter. URI had been dishonest with Dr. Blake—this is how our erudite African American talent is continuously humiliated on our Kingston Rhode Island campus. The process was not fair nor transparent or legitimate.

 

(6) Dean Jen Riley and others on the search/selection committee have a history of not hiring high-level African Americans, and a history of civil rights violations. Whites and people who have a history of discriminatory hiring practices, or no knowledge about diversity hiring, comprised the majority on the search committee to ensure the expected outcome of hiring a white candidate.  Therefore, the process made your “white” selection guaranteed, and therefore, an unfair and unequal employment practice.

 

(7) The communication issued on Monday, April 12th by URI, stated that the Board of Trustees recommended you for hire on the first of April, but everyone was kept in the dark to make us believe that fair and prolonged deliberations were occurring. This means the mere presence of a Black candidate put before students, faculty and staff for the community presentation was a charade. Your selection is another manifestation of the normalized unethical process, which is an egregious violation of equal and fair employment at URI. Dr. Blake was aggressively recruited as a prop and URI used him as cover as they have used so many black intellectuals as props to whitewash their racism on campus.

 

(8) If a decision was made on April 1, 2021, why was the Board of Trustees silent for 12 days pretending to be deliberating? I spared Dr. Blake the humiliation of “sorry we decided on another candidate” because when Dr. Blake received my analysis the morning of April 10th warning him that URI will never hire a black candidate—he withdrew a couple of hours after reading my email. URI made their announcement 2 days later and that confirms my analysis on page 13 in the Christiane Amanpour letter  because URI already knew they would hire the white candidate.

 

For the aforementioned and other reasons, I ask you to rescind your acceptance in the interest of our students. These racist hiring processes on our URI campus repeatedly stamp our African American, Latino and marginalized students with a badge of inferiority, when they continuously see White people selected for leadership positions over highly qualified African Americans and other diverse candidates.

 

Sincerely,

Louis Kwame Fosu

 

FYI, the members of your search committee were the following: 

•

Tom Ryan ’75, Hon. ’99, Chair, Presidential Search Committee

•

Margo Cook ’86, Chair, URI Board of Trustees

•

Megan Echevarria, Chair, Advisory Committee and Chair, Faculty Senate, Section Head, Spanish, and Associate Professor of Spanish and Film Media Studies

•

Barbara Cottam, Ex-Officio Member, URI Board of Trustees and Executive Vice President, Citizens Bank

•

Rachel DiCioccio ‘92, Professor, Director of Office of Innovation in General Education, Communication Studies

•

Michael Fascitelli ’78, Hon. ’08, URI Board of Trustees and Founder, MDF Capital

•

Mayrai Gindy, Ex-Officio Faculty Representative, URI Board of Trustees and Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

•

Christine Heenan, URI Board of Trustees and President, Clarendon Group Inc.

•

E. Paul Larrat ’82, MB ’84, M ’88, Dean, College of Pharmacy

•

Roby Luna ‘04, URI Board of Trustees and President and CEO, Aretec Inc.

•

Michael McNally MBA ’81, Vice Chair, URI Board of Trustees

•

Madyson Ramsay, URI Vice President, Student Senate

•

Jeannette Riley, Dean, College of Arts & Sciences

•

Sean Rogers, Associate Professor, Spachman Professor of Human Resources and Labor Relations, College of Business

•

Cecilia Rouse, URI Board of Trustees and Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

•

Armand Sabitoni ‘73, URI Board of Trustees and General Secretary-Treasurer, Laborers’ International Union

 ___

Prof. Louis Kwame Fosu, JD/MBA

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