Former Eastern University Prof Says School Leaders Espoused White Supremacist Views

Eastern University, the defendant in a just-filed lawsuit (image via Google Maps)

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Former Eastern University Prof Says School Leaders Espoused White Supremacist Views

You probably don’t think about Eastern University that much, save for when you pass by those billboards advertising Eastern University’s $9,900 online MBA. The tiny Baptist-affiliated college—formerly the collegiate stomping grounds of Doug Mastriano, bless his little heart—sits quietly in St. Davids on a particularly posh section of the Main Line. But now the school finds itself a defendant in a lawsuit filed by a former professor.

Malvern resident Anne Whitney Collins started working at Eastern’s business school in 2015. She was a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor. Four years later, Eastern promoted her. She retained her teaching position. But she also took on the role of special assistant to both the dean and to the chair of the graduate business programs, Al Socci and Tod Gilmore, respectively. And that’s where things started going downhill fast, claims Collins in a just-filed federal lawsuit.

According to her suit, both Socci and Gilmore, who are white, consistently made racist remarks about a wide variety of people and issues. And she says this only intensified after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The suit claims that “Gilmore often espoused white supremacist beliefs and also openly disparaged the mandatory diversity training for faculty” and that Socci made “offensive comments regarding the Black Lives Matter movement and continued to espouse racist ideologies.”

Collins claims she went to both men and asked them to stop making the remarks, but that her approaching them had no effect. In the summer of 2020, as protests swept across the nation, the lawsuit claims that Socci was called out on social media for being a racist and that a similar allegation was made via an anonymous complaint filed with the university in the fall of 2020. Collins claims in the suit that other staff members were offended by both men’s comments as well.

In February 2021, Collins says, she went to Eastern University higher-ups about her “serious concerns regarding the hostile work environment, which was being created by the white supremacy and racist ideologies promoted by Dean Socci and Tod Gilmore.” But she says the school took no action to solve the problem. Beginning in July 2021, Collins says, she was the target of a retaliatory campaign to push her out of the school, with the head of human resources eventually encouraging her to resign and another member of management calling her presence on campus “inflammatory.”

Then, in August 2021, Collins says, the university reassigned all her fall courses to other professors. Soon, she was out of a job.

I reached out to Socci and Gilmore as well as other members of Eastern University’s faculty and staff. No one responded.

WaPo Weighs in on Stephen Starr’s New Amtrak Food

Every since I heard that Philly restaurant mogul Stephen Starr was helping Amtrak with its lackluster dining program, I wondered how good the food could possibly be. Well, longtime Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema appears to be a big fan. He uses words like “luscious” and “lovely” in his gushy review.

Headlines You Don’t Expect to See Everyday

Yes, There Was a Camel Eating Hoagie Rolls on the Streets of Philadelphia. Naturally, the author couldn’t resist making the joke: “It’s not even hump day!” Womp womp.

Local Talent

Philadelphia born-and-bred actor Kevin Bacon just joined the list of actors on the picket line in the big Hollywood strikes. Bacon says he has concerns about wages. Not his wages, but those of the vast majority of actors in the industry, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck. He’s also concerned about the ease of replacing real background actors with AI ones.

By the Numbers

$76: Starting price for resale tickets to Bruce Springsteen at Citizens Bank Park in August. He’s no Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, that’s for sure! (Full disclosure: I’m not a big fan.)

16 percent: Drop in applications for new businesses in the Philadelphia area in 2022, compared to applications in 2022. Nationally, the drop averages out to about 6.6 percent.

$9 million: Fines the Philadelphia Parking Authority has collected from UPS for illegal truck parking in Philadelphia since 2018, mostly on major roads in Center City.

And from the If-I-Step-on-One-More-Goddamn-Lego Sports News …

The Phils kick off a three-game home series with the Brewers tonight at 6:40. You want more than that? Tough noogies. We took the grandkids home last night after they spent four freaking days here while their parents were in California, and I have never been so tired in my entire life.

Oh, okay, here’s this.

https://twitter.com/Tori_Philly4/status/1680942897623977993

Oh, okay, okay, and this too, from a former Sixer:

Charles Barkley, everybody! pic.twitter.com/SYTtOEqeoX

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) July 17, 2023

All Philly Today sports news, such as it is, is provided by Sandy Hingston.