Fired equity director sues California college, alleging she was sacked for not being woke enough

An equity director has filed a lawsuit alleging she was fired from a California community college for questioning the institution’s social justice ideology.

The lawsuit, filed by the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racisms (FAIR), claims De Anza Community College created a hostile working environment for Dr. Tabia Lee and fired her because she wasn’t “the right type of Black person.”

Lee began working at De Anza in 2021, following a “rigorous hiring process” where she openly expressed her views and values, she said in an interview with Merion West. 

“I was very transparent about who I am and what my values are as an educator,” Lee continued. “I made it through the process and was hired on. However, when I started to do the work that I had promised I would do and the approach that I promised I would use, that’s when I ran into some great difficulties.” 

Lee claims she was denied tenure and accused of “White speaking” and supporting “White supremacists” for not promoting an extreme critical race theory agenda to “decenter whiteness.” 

“Those are things that in my 40-year career as an educator, I had never heard teachers calling each other things like that or myself never referred to in those ways,” Lee told Fox News Digital. 

During an evaluation, administrators even claimed Lee’s views and concepts were “deeply offensive” and accused her of not accepting criticism. 

Lee was fired in February, which the college said was due to a “persistent inability to demonstrate cooperation in working with colleagues and staff” and “unwillingness to accept constructive criticism,” according to Fox News. 

Lee said the university’s decision doesn’t reflect who she is as an educator.  

“It doesn’t reflect any objective reality or any of the work I was doing with countless colleagues, collaborators and partners, and the people who had finally started coming out and working with the Office of Equity, Social Justice and Multicultural Education under my leadership because of the inclusive way I approached my work,” she said.