A Penn State equity officer praised the looting that occurred in the aftermath of George Floyd's death in 2020, according to a lawsuit from a former professor.
"What we call looting, I think of just getting what you're due," Alina Wong, then-assistant vice provost for educational equity at Pennsylvania State University, allegedly said during a June 5, 2020, faculty Zoom call. "There’s been a disruption, I think, in all of our lives. And what I’m interested in doing is staying in the disruption—and actually, disrupting more—because I think that’s what we haven’t seen and that’s what we haven’t done." Wong also allegedly said she wanted to make white faculty "feel the pain" experienced by Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer.
The alleged comments are detailed in a lawsuit filed this month by Zack De Piero, a former professor at Penn State Abington who claims the university violated his right to free speech and discriminated against him for being white. De Piero says the hostile environment forced him to leave his job as an assistant English professor in August 2022.
Wong has since left Penn State, joining Macalester College in Minnesota last year as vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
De Piero also alleged in the lawsuit that Penn State Abington English department chair Liliana Naydan reacted with horror to the news that he was "not a registered Democrat" but rather an independent.
Penn State administrators made several decisions that showed bias against conservative members of the university community in the wake of Floyd's death.
In July 2020, the university deleted a tweet that told conservative students at the school their "viewpoints are important" after left-wing students expressed outrage.