The Chronicle of Higher Education
August 6th, 2014
The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth has been ordered to pay nearly $1.2-million in back pay, damages, and other costs to a professor of English who filed complaints, beginning a decade ago, that she was being denied a promotion from assistant to full professor because of her gender and Chinese ancestry, The Herald News, in Fall River, Mass., reported.
In 2011 a hearing officer with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination ruled in favor of the professor, LuLu C.H. Sun, and ordered UMass-Dartmouth to promote Ms. Sun and pay her $354,000 in lost wages and damages. The university appealed portions of that order, including a $200,000 award for emotional distress and a $10,000 fine.
In a ruling issued in May the full commission upheld the damages awarded in 2011 and ordered the university to pay them, along with some $300,000 in interest and other costs. It also ordered the university to pay lawyers’ fees and other legal costs amounting, with interest, to more than $500,000. The ruling noted that the university had already promoted the professor and compensated her for lost wages.