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His lawsuit alleges the university fired him and then posted a job opening in his department encouraging minorities to apply

The Liberty Justice Center has filed a racial discrimination lawsuit alleging the University of Illinois Chicago fired a professor because he is a “white male” who criticized the institution’s racial hiring practices, according to the lead attorney on the case.

The lawsuit is on behalf of Professor Stephen Kleinschmit (pictured) “whose contract was terminated after he criticized the university’s racially discriminatory hiring programs,” a news release from the law firm states.

“It was very clear that he was not welcome there because of the color of his skin and the fact that he was a white male,” lead attorney Reilly Stephens told The College Fix in a recent phone interview.

Stephens said they fired Kleinschmit in August of 2023, and later posted a job opening in his department encouraging minority candidates to apply.

What’s more, “they let him go at a point in the year where it was basically impossible for him to find an equivalent job,” the attorney told The Fix.

Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, law firm that seeks to protect fundamental rights, is seeking damages suffered as a result of his firing.

Kleinschmit was a clinical associate professor in the Department of Public Policy, Management, and Analytics when he “became concerned about the university’s fixation on race when interviewing and hiring faculty,” according to the news release.

He “quickly realized that multiple university programs were illegal under federal law because they regularly used race as a primary or even exclusive factor in hiring decisions.”

After speaking out against these practice, he received a notice that the public university had ended his contract, the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit also accuses university administrators of “purposely” waiting to notify him about his termination “until the academic hiring cycle was concluding, leaving him unemployed for an entire year.”

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When asked about Kleinschmit’s goal with the suit, Stephens told The Fix that the professor “really cares about shining a light on these problems and the fact that these kind of policies are in the country, and this is just one example of what’s been going on.”

When asked about the broader political landscape, he stated, “This is everywhere at this point.”

“We think that it is high time that people tried to do a little something about it and push back on things that have really become just absurdities, and the only reason they survive is in the oxygen-free environment of a college campus certain things can survive that would not actually survive out in the real world,” the attorney told The Fix. 

He said Liberty Justice Center hopes “this is part of a longer-term effort where we as a society put our foot down and say no more. This is not the kind of people we want to be.”

The university declined to comment in an email to The Fix last week, stating, “The university does not comment on pending litigation.”

Meanwhile, Leigh Ann O’Neill, managing director of legal advocacy at the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR), said cases like Kleinschmit’s are “unfortunately all-too-common.”

“Higher education has been a hotbed of discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion practices for years, and there’s often an unsettling attitude that our civil rights laws simply don’t apply to colleges and universities,” she stated in an email to The Fix.

She explained, “Hiring based on race, skin color, or ethnicity has been illegal in America for decades, yet noting this fact out loud continues to draw ire, condemnation, and retaliation, as we see in what Professor Kleinschmit experienced.”

“Honoring true diversity should always be a welcome virtue within academia, and when universities engage in discriminatory practices in violation of Federal law and our constitutional rights, they undermine this important American tradition,” O’Neill said.

She predicted that Americans will see more lawsuits like Professor Kleinschmit’s in the near future unless universities make changes.

“Institutions of higher education need to harness this opportunity to achieve compliance with civil rights laws and set a good example for America’s students of how our institutions can embrace true diversity in lawful and holistic ways,” she told The Fix.

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IMAGE: Stephen Kleinschmit/X, Liberty Justice Center

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