Editor’s note: A previous version of the headline on this story said a law school panel review found the candidate had targeted the law professor. While the review supported the professor’s allegations generally it did not specifically mention Hensel.

City University of New York Provost Wendy Hensel has portrayed herself as a champion of diversity, equity and inclusion as she vies to be the next president of the University of Hawaii. 

But documents obtained by Civil Beat show that Hensel played a key role in retaliating against a Black law professor at Georgia State University, where Hensel formerly was provost. The law professor, Tanya Washington, had questioned Hensel’s commitment to diversity and faculty involvement in connection to Hensel hiring a friend as Georgia State’s law school dean.

A Georgia State College of Law review panel supported Washington’s allegations that she had improperly received a poor performance review after she criticized Hensel.

In 2019, Hensel left her position as dean of the law school to become Georgia State University’s provost. She appointed Leslie Wolf, another Georgia State law professor and friend of hers, to replace her as the law school dean. Washington questioned Hensel about that move, setting off what Washington called “patronizing, implicit bias hand in hand with explicit disparate treatment” targeted at her.

Hensel didn’t respond to interview requests placed with her office, and UH has declined to make the candidates available for interviews. Washington, a Harvard-educated law professor, also declined to comment.

But the dispute is outlined in a trove of documents provided to Civil Beat, including Washington’s official complaint to the university and a hearing committee’s eventual findings in Washington’s favor.

According to an August 2021 letter drafted by Washington’s attorney, Julie Oinonen, the problems began after Washington challenged Hensel about Wolf’s appointment during a faculty meeting in 2020. According to the letter, Washington asked how Wolf’s proposed appointment as permanent law school dean without an open search promoted Georgia State’s commitment to diversity in faculty hires.

Soon after the meeting, Washington received notice from Hensel rejecting Washington for a fellowship that a selection committee had unanimously recommended she receive, the letter says. 

Things came to a head after Wolf gave Washington a negative post-tenure job review, despite a unanimous positive review from a faculty committee. Washington objected that Wolf had not cited five amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court that Washington had co-authored, including one that the court cited in its landmark Obergefell decision supporting same-sex marriage.

“Despite Professor Washington’s impressive body of work, Professor Wolf and Provost Hensel — both White females and close, personal friends — have repeatedly derogated their Black, female colleague’s accomplishments and contributions, and denigrated her professional work file, adversely impacting her professional reputation and causing her significant anxiety and emotional distress,” the letter says. 

In late 2021, following a hearing with witnesses on both sides, a college of law hearing panel vindicated Washington by finding that Wolf’s report had improperly failed to credit Washington’s amicus briefs as scholarship and had also arbitrarily failed to mention a university-wide award Washington had won. 

During the hearing, Washington’s lawyer demonstrated how metadata in Wolf’s review showed that the document had actually been created by Hensel, who was then Georgia State’s provost, just weeks before Wolf sent the document to Washington under Wolf’s name.

Key Interview With UH Regents Next Week

The reports of the incident at Georgia State come as the University of Hawaii Board of Regents prepares to hold confidential interviews with the two finalists for the job of UH president — Hensel, now provost of the City University of New York, and fellow finalist Julian Vasquez Heilig, provost of Western Michigan University. The regents are scheduled to hold closed-door meetings Wednesday and Thursday.

In community forums, both candidates have pledged their commitment to Native Hawaiian culture and values, and diversity in general.

“Our programs should be thoroughly inculcated with the values and mission and vision of Native Hawaiians, and my job I would see would be to elevate that in every way that I could and to support that work,” Hensel said at a Sept. 24 forum at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus.

Hensel specifically cited her work at Georgia State with “low-income, first generation Black and Brown students.”

At CUNY, she said, she oversees some campuses where more than 100 native languages are spoken. According to its website, CUNY’s student population is 22% Asian and Pacific Islander; 26% Black; 31% Hispanic, and 21% White.  

It’s not clear what if any effect the reports of Hensel’s past at Georgia State could have on Hensel’s application to lead the University of Hawaii. The Board of Regents’ deliberations are secret, as are their interviews with the candidates. 

Kris Hanselman, a former executive director of the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, a faculty union, said the allegations that faculty were not consulted on a key hiring decision are troubling. But she said the fact that the incident happened five years ago and at a previous job could lessen the sting. Wolf’s role as the job review’s author of record also helps Hensel, she said. And there’s also the question of how this incident fits into Hensel’s body of work. 

In addition, the outcome favored Washington, suggesting she wasn’t harmed, Hanselman said.

“The process worked to protect the faculty member who raised the issue,” Hanselman said. 

But how much the system protected Washington is debatable. In fact, the process created significant hardship for her, Washington said in a letter to Georgia State’s president, M. Brian Blake.

“When faculty must, as I was required to do, spend a full year challenging the arbitrary and unwarranted actions of an administrator, endure the resulting emotional stress and anxiety, and pay more than $10k for legal counsel,” she wrote, “the harm is evident.”