A white former staffer at a Massachusetts liberal arts college for women is suing the school, alleging it discriminated against her because of her skin color.
Jodi Shaw filed the lawsuit against Smith College earlier this month, accusing the Northampton school “fostered a toxic climate of racial fear, hostility, and exclusion” and that she was forced into “an ideologically driven campaign of race-essentialism and collective guilt pushed by the school.”
“[Smith College] steadily removed [Shaw’s] job responsibilities, denied her promotional opportunities consistent with all of her colleagues, placed her on furlough, launched a pretextual investigation into her email usage, and deliberately made any further employment at Smith College impossible for Shaw,” the lawsuit alleges.
Shaw, a single mother, worked as a staffer in the college library until February 2021, when she resigned after she “felt that she had exhausted all her internal options.”
Smith was the subject of national headlines after a black student in the summer of 2018 claimed she had been asked to leave a campus building by a white janitor for “eating while black.”
The incident sparked a change in the college’s professional development, Shaw’s lawsuit says, mandating a series of diversity and anti-bias training, despite the fact the student’s claims proved to be false. It was later discovered she was only asked to leave because a children’s summer camp was using the building and only adults involved with the camp who had “child-abuse clearances” were permitted inside.
Sensitivity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-bias training are often associated with critical race theory, which says U.S. institutions are systemically racist and oppressive to racial minorities. At Smith College, one of the pieces of training used and attached to the lawsuit said, “Racism and white supremacy are pervasive and part of the DNA of the United States.”
According to the lawsuit, Shaw was subjected to repeated harassment and discrimination on multiple occasions because of her skin color. In one instance, she was told she could not organize a “library rap” with students “because you are white.”
“Smith and the other defendants in this action unlawfully discriminated against the plaintiff and created a racially hostile environment because of and on account of her race,” the lawsuit states.
Shaw is seeking punitive damages against the college.