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LOS ANGELES (CNS) - The UC Regents are urging dismissal of a former UCLA Anderson School of Management professor's gender discrimination lawsuit, saying the plaintiff's own decisions as well as criticisms from students were factors in her contract not being renewed for the 2022-23 academic year.
In her Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit, Jennifer Walske alleges gender discrimination, harassment, retaliation, hostile work environment, failure to prevent discrimination and both intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress. She maintains she experienced a backlash retaliation for complaining that female faculty members were subjected to disparate treatment by the business school administration.
But in court papers filed Friday and Monday with Judge Bruce Iwasaki, attorneys for the UC Regents say Walske was an adjunct professor and that there was no guarantee her appointment be renewed each academic year. Moreover, Walske had mixed ratings from students who raised concerns regarding her work and she has no legal grounds for seeking punitive damages, the UC lawyers further contend.
When UCLA offered Walske alternative courses to teach after the ones she had were removed, she refused to teach any courses at all and the Anderson School had to scramble to find someone else to teach those classes, according to the UC lawyers' pleadings.
Sanjay Sood, the Anderson School faculty chairman from July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2023, stated in a sworn declaration that he made a non-retaliatory decision to not renew Walske's contract.
"The decisions I made regarding Walske's employment had nothing to do with her complaints and I would have made the same decision regardless of any complaint," Sood said while adding that he did not intent to cause the plaintiff emotional distress.
In her suit filed in June 2022, Walske maintains that she is the latest in a long line of faculty and staff who have been retaliated against for coming forward with legitimate complaints of discrimination, harassment and retaliation.
"In Dr. Walske's case, UCLA and its agents not only retaliated against her for reporting the discrimination and harassment, but also, when she reported the retaliation, the university doubled down and retaliated against her even further," the suit states.
Walske is an award-winning professor and in 2018, she was recruited the Anderson School from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley to be an adjunct assistant professor, as well as roles as interim faculty director for Impact@Anderson, an academic center promoting equity and sustainability through social impact work, and as a research fellow in the Price Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the suit states.
Walske moved with her family to Los Angeles to begin what she thought would be a rewarding, long-term relationship with UCLA and the Anderson School, according to the suit.
"Regrettably, however, not long after she arrived on campus, like other female faculty within UCLA Anderson, Dr. Walske experienced gender discrimination and a hostile work environment," the suit states.
Walske reported, among other things, that her immediate supervisor, UCLA Anderson School's then-Interim Dean, Alfred Osborne Jr., made inappropriate gender-related comments to her, treated male faculty more favorably and appeared to be engaged in an improper relationship with a female subordinate, resulting in a hostile work environment for those female faculty and staff who were not in a relationship with him, the suit states.
A hearing on the UC's dismissal motion is scheduled June 6.