Clark v. Claremont University Center

• Decision Date: 13 May 1992
• Docket Number: No. B051296,B051296
• Citation: 8 Cal.Rptr.2d 151,6 Cal.App.4th 639
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: , 65 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 919, 74 Ed. Law Rep. 210 Reginald CLARK, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. CLAREMONT UNIVERSITY CENTER AND GRADUATE SCHOOL, Defendant and Appellant.

Page 151

8 Cal.Rptr.2d 151

6 Cal.App.4th 639, 65 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 919,

74 Ed. Law Rep. 210

Reginald CLARK, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. CLAREMONT UNIVERSITY CENTER AND GRADUATE SCHOOL, Defendant and Appellant.

No. B051296.

Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 1, California.

May 13, 1992.

Certified for Partial Publication ^*

Review Denied July 23, 1992.

O'Melveny & Myers, Catherine B. Hagen, Mia E. Klein, and K. Leigh Chapman, Los Angeles, for defendant and appellant.

Kindel & Anderson, Godfrey Isaac and Steven M. Friedman, Los Angeles, for plaintiff and respondent.

ORTEGA, Associate Justice.

Plaintiff Reginald Clark, a former assistant professor at defendant Claremont Graduate School, an unincorporated division of defendant Claremont University Center, filed this race discrimination suit under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (Gov.Code, § 12940 et seq., FEHA) after being denied promotion and tenure. The jury awarded Clark $1 million in compensatory damages and $16,327 in punitive damages, and the trial court awarded Clark attorney's fees of $419,633.13. Defendants appeal from the judgment. In the published portion of the opinion, we hold the verdict is supported by sufficient evidence. We affirm the judgment.

FACTS & PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Claremont Graduate School (Claremont) belongs to the six-member Claremont Colleges in Claremont, California. In May 1979, Claremont hired Clark as an assistant professor in its Education Department for According to Claremont's Rules Governing Appointments, Promotions, and Awards of Tenure (APT Rules), a full-time faculty member may not serve without tenure for more than seven years, including any years of prior experience which are credited by Claremont. Clark, who requested and received one year of credit, formally requested tenure in his fifth year at Claremont in 1984.

a three-year term. Claremont renewed Clark's contract for a second three-year term in 1982.

Clark's departmental review resulted in a five to three vote in his favor, but two of the most senior members, the former and current department chairmen who had guided him through the tenure process, voted against him. At the second level of review, the Appointments, Promotions, and Tenure (APT) Committee voted against Clark by a four to one vote. Clark appealed to the president, who investigated Clark's racial discrimination allegations and found that at a departmental meeting on Clark's tenure request, a faculty member who voted against Clark had said "us white folks have rights, too." However, the president affirmed the APT Committee's decision because of Clark's insufficient publication record and negative student evaluations. Clark left Claremont when his contract expired unrenewed in 1985.

Because the process as well as the standards for evaluating a candidate's tenure application are significant to our review of the judgment, we will begin by discussing those factors before describing Clark's background, his experience at Claremont, his tenure review and internal appeal, his FEHA claim and this lawsuit.

A. The Tenure Review Process

At Claremont, the tenure review process begins within the candidate's own department. The candidate and his department chairman usually begin assembling a dossier in time for review during the sixth year of service. The dossier contains the candidate's vita; copies of his principal publications; five evaluations from qualified and nationally prominent scholars from other institutions (excluding the Claremont Colleges), at least three of whom are not closely associated with the candidate; and evidence of teaching ability, such as letters obtained by the chairman from the candidate's recent graduate students.

In addition, the dossier contains the department chairman's letter of recommendation based on a majority vote of the tenured faculty members who met and conferred on the candidate's qualifications for tenure. If the vote was not unanimous, the dissenting faculty members must submit their own letters of dissent to the APT Committee.

The candidate's completed dossier, including the department chairman's letter of recommendation and any letters of dissent, is then transmitted to the APT Committee. The APT Committee is an interdepartmental body with five full professors elected by the faculty at large.

The APT Committee then makes its recommendation by majority vote to the dean of faculty, executive dean, and president (who comprise the administration), who may make their own recommendations to the trustees (board of fellows) for or against the candidate. The board of fellows has the ultimate power of making appointments, promotions, and awards of tenure.

B. Standards for Tenure

Claremont's stated requirements for tenure are scholarly achievement, teaching ability, and community service.

In practice, Claremont was applying these standards more stringently in 1984, when Clark was reviewed, than 10 years earlier. This was not due to any change in the written rules. It happened gradually as the school's orientation shifted from teaching to research.

As a graduate research institution, Claremont primarily serves degreed students who are pursuing research careers. Accordingly, Claremont mainly hires senior faculty members who, unlike Clark, come in with tenure at the full professor level. This means fewer tenure decisions are As a research university, Claremont views scholarly achievement as essential for tenure. Without demonstrated scholarly achievement, Claremont will deny tenure even though the candidate is an excellent teacher. On the other hand, because of its small enrollment and faculty, each faculty member must also be a proficient teacher. Accordingly, even a candidate with top marks for scholarly achievement may still be denied tenure if he is deficient as a teacher.

made at Claremont than at other types of schools.

In judging a candidate's teaching ability, Claremont relies on student evaluations and letters. In judging a candidate's scholarly achievement, Claremont's unwritten practice is to give the most weight to books or articles published by university presses or refereed journals. ¹ Technical research reports and invited papers are given less weight, and are insufficient by themselves to satisfy the scholarly achievement requirement.

The Education Faculty had no written guidelines identifying the necessary publications for meeting the scholarly achievement requirement for tenure at the time of Clark's review.

C. Clark's Background

Clark, born on November 15, 1949, was raised with four siblings in Chicago, Illinois. His mother worked as a domestic. After graduating from high school in 1967, Clark briefly attended a community college and Indiana State University before transferring to Howard University in Washington, D.C. There he received a bachelor of fine arts degree with a minor in sociology of education in 1971.

Clark then pursued advanced degrees in education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, which is ranked among the top five education schools in the nation. Clark earned two masters degrees and a doctorate in May 1977. Clark received the National Fellowship Funds Award, the Southern Fellowship Funds Award, and the Education Opportunity Program Award.

While pursuing his doctorate, Clark took a leave to teach at Chicago State University during the 1974-1975 and 1975-1976 terms. Clark taught a psychology class called Cultural Factors in Learning which focused on how the social cultures of various ethnic and racial groups influence the learning process. Clark also taught courses in the Education Curriculum Instruction Department. In addition, Clark published an article in a refereed journal at the University of Southern California on how black urban youth are socialized by attending dance parties.

Clark then returned to the University of Wisconsin and successfully completed his dissertation, " 'Black Families as Educators, a Qualitative Inquiry.' " Clark intended his 422-page dissertation to be the first of a three-phase, 10-year cross-cultural research project which would explain, among other things, why some students do well in school and others do not. In his dissertation, Clark had more narrowly focused on 13 black students in Chicago who were from similar social backgrounds but performed quite differently at school. As a result of his dissertation research, Clark developed a series of 20 or 21 hypotheses which he planned to pursue in his second and third phases of cross-cultural research.

Upon receiving his doctorate in May 1977, Clark worked as a research associate for the Illinois Board of Higher Education from the fall of 1977 to the spring of 1979. Clark also obtained a publishing contract from the prestigious University of Chicago Press and began writing a book based on his dissertation.

Because his career goal was college teaching and research, Clark responded in late 1978 to a job advertisement for a position

in multicultural and urban education at Claremont.

D. Clark's Experience at Claremont

When Clark interviewed for the position in April 1979, Conrad Briner, chairman of the Education Faculty, told Clark he would probably receive tenure in three to four years if his book was finished by then. Several others also expressed this view to Clark: Caroline Ellner, Claremont's assistant dean, search committee chair, and member of the Education Faculty; Joseph Weeres, also a member of the Education Faculty; and Paul Albrecht, Claremont's dean.

Dean Albrecht specifically told Clark that tenure was "something formally worked out at [the] departmental level." When Clark inquired about receiving credit for his two prior years at Chicago State University, Dean Albrecht said that should not be a problem, that this "was something that is routinely handled at the departmental level[,] [a]nd referred [Clark] back to Conrad Briner on that point."

When Clark began working as an assistant professor in ...