The University of Cincinnati may be best known as the alma mater of Travis Kelce, the three-time Super Bowl champion and fiance to Taylor Swift.A lawsuit by a former professor at the school, alleging anti-white discrimination and tolerance for sexual harassment against whites in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion, could put a tight end to that era and subject the public research university to a cruel summer.
Brian Calfano alleges UCincy nearly drove him to suicide by investigating him for sexual harassment without an accusation and ousting him as journalism department head as retaliation for hiring a white person to advise the student newspaper and supporting her sexual harassment claim against a professor who wanted a racial minority for her job.
When Calfano “resigned to escape an institution determined to destroy him,” the university “released his unresolved Title IX file to a newspaper reporter” who had been a student of the alleged sexual harasser, the suit says. The resulting article painted “the unadjudicated allegations as fact” and got him fired from his new job as a TV news anchor.
“He has since found work, but his academic career is over, his broadcast journalism career is over, and his reputation has been irreparably harmed by allegations that were never tested, never adjudicated, and never resolved,” according to the suit, which pleads First Amendment and Title IX retaliation and “civil conspiracy to deprive constitutional rights.”
Calfano’s lawyer, Shams Hirji, told Just the News the university has “waived service and formally appeared in the case” but doesn’t have to file an answer or motion to dismiss until April 24. The university’s attorney in the case, Drew Corner Piersall, didn’t respond to a query.
The case may draw federal interest, considering UCincy is already the subject of a federal antidiscrimination complaint by Protect the Public’s Trust based on undercover video by Accuracy in Media.
The video, featuring an AIM investigator posing as a “prospective parent,” shows a sociology department administrator calling DEI “a core of our curriculum” and saying, “We can’t really strip it out,” in spite of Ohio’s statutory ban on DEI in curriculum.
