Spit, “faggot,” and a tenure denial

  Yale law professor Bill Eskridge testifies before Congress on the pending Employment and Non-Discrimination Act of 2009, which would "bar sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in the workplace by states as well as by private employers," and alleges that the University of Virginia Law School denied him tenure in 1985 because of his sexual orientation.  From the testimony (opens a .doc file), the relevant portion begins on page 83):

Late in the morning, as I was finishing up my class preparation, the chair of the committee stormed into my office and screamed at me for 10 minutes or so.  With clenched fists and a beet-red face, the chair of the committee threw a tantrum that included a string of accusations, such as “stabbing me in the back” and behaving in the treacherous manner that he and his colleagues ought to have expected of a “faggot.” . . . [I] was reduced to tears as the chair of the committee spat on me and called me dirty names.

Story from UVA Law Blog and Hunter of Justice, via Brian Leiter.

Update:  See this statement via Leiter from current UVA Law Dean Paul Mahoney, denying the allegations.

Update II: The UVA Law Blog has reprinted a January 31, 1986, article from the Virginia Law Weekly that discusses the incident in some detail, particularly student reactions.  

Update III:  Above the Law is now on the case, with an extensive story and links.  In it, Eskridge provides a lengthy response to UVA’a statement denying the allegations in Eskridge’s congressional testimony.

Comments

[Jabba]

Your update II is seriously misleading and should be corrected. The Virginia Law Weekly does not discuss the "incident" in the sense of spitting and homophobia; it discusses student disappointment that Eskridge, who was a highly popular teacher, did not receive tenure. As you have written it, it implies that the "incident" was documented in print and implies that Dean Mahoney's statement denying it happened is contradicted by contemporary evidence.

You also don't capture the spirit or full content of what Mahoney says about Eskridge's remarkable testimony or U.Va.'s relationship to the LGBT community. U.Va. has started the careers of several well known LGBT scholars, and has long had (predating this alleged, long ago incident) prominent gay faculty.

[Bill]

This is the most biased article I've yet read on this controversy.

Congrats on being a terrible writer.