WASHINGTON, Jan. 21,
2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Just days after California State University (CSU) announced its intention to add "caste" to the
system's anti-discrimination policy as part of a collective
bargaining agreement with CSU faculty,
over 80 of those faculty members wrote a blistering letter to the
CSU Board of Trustees opposing the move.
Since adding caste as a specific and separate protected category
would apply only to faculty of Indian and South Asian descent, the
faculty letter stated that the new policy would unfairly target a
minority community for policing and disparate treatment.
"The addition of caste is a misguided overreach given the
existence of comprehensive policies which already protect against
various forms of discrimination" said Dr. Praveen Sinha, Professor of Accountancy at
California State University, Long
Beach. "We cannot but oppose the unique risk that
CSU's move puts on us as they add a
category that is only associated with people of Indian descent,
such as myself and thousands of other faculty and students in the
CSU system. It is going to create
divisions where they simply do not exist."
There are more than 600 Cal State
faculty of Indian and South Asian origin who would be rendered
vulnerable should the collective bargaining agreement be passed as
currently written.
"As a faculty member of Indian origin, I am well aware that
discrimination is a daily reality for many students of varied
backgrounds, and there is a robust mechanism of addressing all such
complaints under existing laws and CSU
policy," said Dr. Sunil Kumar,
Professor of Engineering at San Diego State
University. "But this policy change has been made in the
absence of any scientifically reliable evidence or data.
Rather than redressing discrimination, it will actually cause
discrimination by unconstitutionally singling out and targeting
Hindu faculty of Indian and South Asian descent as members of a
suspect class because of deeply entrenched, false stereotypes about
Indians, Hindus, and caste. We are disappointed that the
CSU faculty association championed this
move without holding discussions with the concerned faculty even
when three professors had alerted them way back in May 2021. In their meeting with these three
professors on January 14 this year,
some of the CFA leaders admitted that they did not understand the
complexity of caste and that they dropped the ball. "
The faculty members expressed deep concern that, as written, the
caste policy would specifically deny Hindu, Indian and South Asian
faculty equal protection and due process.
Lawyers at the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), Suhag Shukla, Samir
Kalra, and Nikhil Joshi, also
sent a letter to CSU Board of Trustees, the CSU Office of General
Counsel, CSU Chancellor, and president of the California Faculty
Association, on behalf of CSU
faculty.
"We've been working closely with concerned faculty since we were
approached in December of last year. We will be filing Freedom of
Information and State Public Records Act requests on their behalf
to investigate how this discriminatory clause made it into the
collective bargaining agreement and helping them explore all legal
avenues to protect their rights as employees in the CSU system," stated Suhag
Shukla, Esq. "It's simply unfathomable how system-wide
leaders and a faculty union, which is contractually obligated to
protect and represent all of its members regardless of their
background, could negotiate a clause that will discriminate against
faculty of a particular background or faith, especially where
existing laws and policies already provide redress.
The faculty petition points out that the policy change is
premised on claims made by the anti-Hindu activist group, Equality
Labs, that there is wide-scale prevalence of caste discrimination
in the United States as per a
single non-scientific survey the group reportedly carried out. That
survey was explicitly contradicted and refuted by a more recent and
comprehensive survey by the Carnegie Endowment, Social
Realities of Indian Americans: Results From the 2020 Indian
American Attitudes Survey, which found that while
discrimination on the basis of color is common for Indian
Americans, caste discrimination is exceedingly rare.
Read HAF's full letter sent to the Cal State Board of
Trustees
Read the CSU faculty
petition
Media Contact: Mat McDermott, mat@hafsite.org
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content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/inclusion-of-caste-in-cal-state-non-discrimination-policy-will-illegally-single-out-indian-and-south-asians-concerned-faculty-tell-board-of-trustees-301466065.html
SOURCE Hindu American Foundation