A Chinese-American professor has sued a Texas university for mentioning the name of Dr Hemang Desai only for favoring Indians while awarding tenure.

Dr. Hsien Wang, a Chinese-American assistant professor, has sued Texas Southern Methodist University over discrimination and favoring only Indians. The lawsuit was filed last year but came to light now after being reported by freelance journalist Chris Brunet. In the lawsuit, Wang alleged that there is a systemic problem of discrimination at the university that resulted in him being denied tenure in 2024, while three Indian professors were given the same salary in the accounting department.According to the lawsuit, the university told Wang he was not a good fit and that he needed more citations and more visibility. The lawsuit says he was called a “bad fit” at least 13 times, but an Indian colleague, Saurabh Thomar, received a positive mid-career evaluation from the department chair, who is also an Indian.The lawsuit names Chairman Dr. Hemang Desai, saying that Wang was informed by Desai on November 19, 2024, that a negative departmental vote (3-1) had taken place, in which all three Indian faculty members voted against his tenure, citing failure to achieve outstanding performance, while the sole non-Indian faculty member voted in favor.Wang said that from the beginning, Desai treated him differently and had higher expectations from him than his Indian colleagues.“Since at least 2006, when Hemang Desai (Indian origin) became a full professor at SMU’s Cox School of Business, there has been a systematic pattern of discrimination in tenure decisions in the accounting department. Of the Indian-origin candidates who met the stated productivity standard of at least four of SMU’s top-tier publications, 100% (2 of 2) had tenure: Neil Bhattacharya in 2008 and Neil Bhattacharya in 2020. Gauri Bhatt. Of the non-Indian-origin candidates (Caucasian and Chinese) who meet the stated productivity standard of at least four of SMU’s top tier publications, SMU has not endorsed any non-Indian candidates for tenure, including Mina Pizzini, Chris Hogan, Jing Pan, Jeff Yu, and others.Dr. Wang. “This pattern is consistent with an ancestry-based preference for Indian-origin candidates and a dislike for non-Indian candidates,” the lawsuit says.

‘Indian faculty get head offices with good ideas’

The lawsuit claims that when offices were reassigned to the department’s new building in the spring of 2024, Indian faculty were given prime offices with good views, while East Asian faculty members were assigned to a “Chinese ghetto” down the hall.The university, while filing its response, denied all the allegations and said that Dr Wang is not entitled to any relief.