Pierre Vincent describes his experience as a professor at the Community College of Philadelphia (CCP) as a “mess.”
Having served in adjunct and full-time faculty roles between 1999 and 2006, the former trial attorney and current lecturer at Middle Tennessee State University recalls instances when his academic freedom in the classroom was challenged. He also recalls a pattern of discriminatory hiring practices that often overlooked African-American candidates for full-time positions in favor of lesser-qualified White candidates.
Vincent, like some currently employed minority faculty members, took his grievance to CCP’s Faculty and Staff Federation — the American Federation of Teachers-affiliated faculty union — sharing that he found the union to be “really an arm of the administration.”
But the situation is more complex.
Tensions between the college’s administration and the faculty union have escalated in the last two years. Current faculty union members say they are fighting a battle to recruit and retain diverse faculty, increase salaries and maintain appropriate workloads through contentious contract negotiations.
“It was just a place where I did excellent work and I was always fought against,” Vincent tells Diverse. “I was wildly popular with the students, but I was just held back at every turn.”
In interviews with Diverse, former and current faculty members of color shared similar stories of their experiences at the college, revealing a disturbing pattern of systemic racial discrimination. In some instances, faculty members of color say that even minority administrators themselves have served as “gatekeepers” to the system.
