Rutgers defends Penn scholar accused of fostering a ‘hypersexualized and racially insensitive climate’

Rutgers University is standing behind a prominent University of Pennsylvania education professor who a public report said allegedly fostered a “hypersexualized and racially insensitive climate” at the Penn center she ran — and who is now moving to the New Brunswick, N.J., campus.

Marybeth Gasman, a professor in the Graduate School of Education at Penn for more than 15 years and founding director of the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions, is scheduled to start her new role at Rutgers next week. She will head both the center and the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity and Justice.

Gasman, a nationally known scholar and expert on historically black colleges, was accused in 2017 by former assistants of talking about her sex life and those of her staff and students at both work and in group texts, according to Inside Higher Ed, an online publication that covers higher education. Gasman announced in December 2018 that she was leaving Penn for Rutgers.

“The Graduate School of Education vetted Dr. Gasman before her appointment and eagerly looks forward to her joining the faculty as an internationally recognized expert in U.S. higher education,” Rutgers spokesperson Neal Buccino said Wednesday.

Gasman, 51, did not return an email or calls for comment. She tweeted Wednesday afternoon “Pure Joy!” about two new research associates joining her at the Rutgers center.

Gasman has been a high-profile advocate for access to higher education for minority students. In an Inquirer interview in 2017, the Michigan native said her father’s racism led to her passion for social justice.

“My father was a racist, the worst kind,” Gasman said during a June 2014 talk at Indiana University. “He hated African Americans, even though he never met an African American.”

In a 2016 opinion piece for the Hechinger Report, which was later reprinted in the Washington Post, she took aim at faculty hiring policies. She criticized colleges for failing to employ a more diverse teaching force. The problem isn’t too few candidates or lack of “quality,” she said. It’s a lack of will.

“We simply don’t want them,” she wrote.

The piece by a tenured Ivy League professor drew much attention. And the complaints came not too long after it, according to the Inside Higher Ed article. Unlike some of the scandals over remarks that have toppled or tainted professors from area colleges, these were not over any public speech, posting, or political pronouncement. Instead, it was about banter between Gasman and colleagues or subordinates at Penn.

The article cited interviews with former center assistants it did not identify and screenshots of texts and photos provided to Penn as part of what it reported were formal complaints against her.

Several former center assistants, according to the account, accused Gasman of “fetishizing” some of her Latinx and black staff and students, including rubbing men’s arms and chests, and once asking a man and a woman to compare derriere sizes and encouraging them to hook up. "Please get a room, you two,” Gasman wrote to them.

The center also allegedly hosted a birthday party that included “Pin the Penis on the Naked White Man," and another time, her accusers said, Gasman wore an apron to work that read, “I keep the best snacks under my apron.”

In an email to the Graduate School of Education community at Penn on Wednesday, dean Pam Grossman noted the Inside Higher Ed article and said Penn and the school “do not, and cannot, discuss individual personnel matters,” but added that the school has a “commitment to a respectful, professional workplace and a strong, equitable, and responsive community.”

Penn, according to Inside Higher Ed, hired an independent investigator to look into the complaints, and following the probe put in place “sanctions” to “change the culture.”

Training was provided and master’s students were moved out of the center, while doctoral students and staff members from elsewhere in the graduate school were moved in, according to the article. Gasman’s grant writer, who was accused of participating in some of the sexual comments, resigned following the investigation, the article said.

Penn declined to comment, but Grossman said in her email, “While we cannot reveal the results of any personnel investigation, we take these investigations very seriously and will continue to take appropriate actions based on findings.”

Asked about the details around Gasman’s departure from Penn, a university spokesperson said, "Marybeth got an excellent offer from Rutgers and chose to take it.”

Staff members at the Penn center moved with Gasman to Rutgers. In 2017, the center’s administrators and researchers included four white staffers; the rest were black, Latinx, Asian, and Indian. Most were the first in their family to go to college, she said at the time.

Her associate director at the time, Paola “Lola” Esmieu, described Gasman as fierce and bold. "She speaks up in a way that others don’t,” Esmieu said then.

Esmieu was one of those who moved with Gasman to Rutgers. She did not return a call for comment Wednesday.