At a lawsuit hearing between a professor against ASU and other entities for job discrimination on Wednesday, President Michael Crow said it is absolutely desirable for the University to have a diverse faculty.
“We work very hard to ensure that would be the case, and we’ve made tremendous progress in that direction in the seven years that I’ve been in office,” Crow said.
Joochul Kim, an associate professor at the School of Planning, filed a lawsuit in September 2004 against the Arizona Board of Regents, the University and Alvin Muskatel, an ASU employee, after he said he felt he was denied a promotion to the status of full professor because of his ethnicity.
Kim, who went through an unsuccessful review for promotion in 2000, received a second review after a committee recommended that he have one because of the participation of Mushkatel during Kim’s original review.
The committee found that Mushkatel, a full professor at the School of Planning in 2003 who has since moved on to a different ASU school, should not have participated in Kim’s review while on sabbatical, which is against a school policy.
Kim’s attorney, Kevin Koelbel, said during his opening statements that his client would have accepted being denied a promotion if he had received a fair opportunity.
“He is here today because he believes that he did not get a fair opportunity,” Koelbel said. “He believes that his race and national origin were a motivating factor in the decision to deny his promotion.”
While Crow did not participate in Kim’s 2000 review, the president was the ultimate decider in Kim’s 2003 rereview when the professor was denied promotion a second time. Crow said Kim’s case was not difficult.
“To be clear, Dr. Kim has done excellent work,” Crow said. “The work that he’s done has been valuable. The assessment we’ve made [was that] we needed more of it.”
Crow said that ethnicity was not a factor in the denial of Kim’s promotion. Earlier in the trial, Crow said the University had made progress in achieving diversity by adding faculty members of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
“We do that every chance we can, so that we can present to our students the broadest set of perspectives, the broadest set of ideas and the broadest set of experiences that we can as a part of their university education,” Crow said.
However, Crow said the materials in Kim’s promotion portfolio fell short in the quality of his research.
“Teaching has already been proven and is still on track,” Crow said. “Research is what we look at in particular for promotion to full professor as being critically important.”
Koelbel said Kim dedicated himself to his work for the benefit of ASU since the University first employed him in 1980. His fieldwork has taken him to South Korea, China and across the U.S.
“He will tell you that he was shocked to learn that none of that work counted when it came to promotion,” Koelbel said.
The trial is expected to end early next week.
Reach the reporter at snrodri2@asu.edu.
