Amidst claims that he unfairly targets Black students and disparages affirmative action, an Arkansas law professor is suing two students who he says have damaged his reputation.
Richard J. Peltz, a professor at the William H. Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, is also suing the university’s chapter of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA), an Arkansas-based Black organization called the W. Harold Flowers Law Society and the president of that society.
Both students are members of the BLSA. Peltz alleges that all named in the lawsuit have defamed his character, caused irreparable harm to his reputation within the law school and the state’s legal community and have unjustly distorted his remarks about affirmative action in efforts to paint him as racist.
However, this action has spurred criticism, and many students and educators are concerned with the negative ramifications that the lawsuit may have on academic liberties and freedom of expression at university campuses nationwide.
According to the filed complaint, the conflict stems from a series of campus and classroom discussions about race and affirmative action. In a six-page memo to Charles Goldner, the law school’s dean, concerned students charge Peltz with saying that affirmative action gives “unqualified Black people chances over more qualified Whites.”
The students note that they have “no problem with the difference of opinion about affirmative action,” but accuse Peltz of invoking “hateful and inciting speech” that was used “to attack and demean the Black students in class.”
Students also claim that Peltz displayed a satirical article about the death of Rosa Parks and mocked the civil rights movement. The university’s chapter of the BLSA also asked that Peltz, who joined the school’s faculty in 1998, be restricted from teaching constitutional law “or any other required course where Black students would be forced to have him as a professor,” and that Peltz be required to participate in diversity training.
