Chief of Staff at Rutgers Facing Discrimination Lawsuit
By STEVE EDER, NYTIMES
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In early April, as the Rutgers president, Robert L. Barchi, was working to defuse a coaching abuse scandal, he named Gregory S. Jackson, a university administrator, to be his chief of staff.

Jackson, though, was already facing his own legal problems. About three months earlier, Jackson was sued by four longtime employees in the university’s career services office, all in their late 50s and early 60s. They said that he had engaged in a “campaign of discriminatory actions” against them because of their age, ostracizing them and ultimately forcing their retirement. Barchi was aware of the lawsuit when he promoted Jackson, according to Rutgers officials.

Knowledge of the lawsuit comes as Barchi is struggling to steer the university out of a public-relations crisis that has already upended the athletic department, drawn the ire of elected officials across New Jersey and threatened to snarl ambitious plans pushed by Gov. Chris Christie to restructure the university.

Jackson is the third Rutgers official to face public criticism for discriminatory or abusive behavior in recent months. Mike Rice, the former men’s basketball coach, was fired in April for hurling slurs and epithets at his players; Julie Hermann, the new athletic director, has been under fire amid allegations of misconduct at her previous jobs.

One of the plaintiffs, Richard L. White, said in an interview that Jackson had created “an environment that was toxic, intimidating, bullying.” He said he was “stunned” to learn of Jackson’s promotion.

“It was unbelievable that the abuser was moving into an elevated role in what I would call a culture of abuse,” said White, who was the director of career services at Rutgers for more than 20 years.

Lawyers for Jackson and Rutgers, which was also sued, have denied the allegations of the four former employees and asked a New Jersey Superior Court to dismiss the complaint. Rutgers declined to comment on the specifics of the case because it is pending, but said that it did not disqualify Jackson from the job, and that lawsuits were common in such situations.

“The University views the plaintiffs’ claims in this lawsuit as lacking merit, and plans to vigorously defend its business decisions made in restructuring the University’s Office of Career Services,” John Bennett, a lawyer for Rutgers, said.Rutgers officials pointed to an investigation last year by the university’s Office of Employment Equity. That office “examined complaints of discrimination based on age and or sex in career services and found no evidence of such and no violation of university policy,” Rutgers said in a statement.

The plaintiff’s lawyer, Juan Fernandez, dismissed that investigation as “a sham.” Jackson did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, and Rutgers declined to make him available.

Barchi announced Jackson’s promotion April 10, eight days after video of Rice’s abusive behavior was first made public. In a memo, Barchi called Jackson “an ideal person to fill this new position” and praised his “talent, experience, and knowledge of academic affairs.”

A Rutgers spokeswoman said in a statement Sunday night, “President Barchi believes that Professor Jackson is an effective administrator capable of confronting challenging and complex problems.”

In 2011, soon after Jackson took the job as associate vice president for undergraduate education that included oversight of career services, he began making changes to the department, which an external review later found to be “dysfunctional,” a Rutgers spokesman said Monday. Jackson quickly clashed with leaders there, some of whom were sent to work in a nearby building that the employees referred to as “the island of misfit toys,” the lawsuit said.

Four career services employees — White, Chrystal McArthur, Dorothy Kerr and Mark Kerr — eventually sued Jackson, Rutgers and another department official for age discrimination.

One employee was warned not to speak up and that next time she felt the urge, “she should instead get a massage, get her nails done, or get some therapy, or words to that effect,” according to the lawsuit.

White said that the episodes so frightened him that he was “afraid to look at my e-mail because I might see something from him.”

“I was terrified, waking up at 3:30 in the morning thinking about this,” White said. “If that was the definition of abuse, that is what was happening.”

In March, around the time of their departure from the university, the four plaintiffs wrote a letter to Barchi outlining their concerns, saying Jackson had subjected them to “mental, physical, and emotional anguish.”

“This is not how long-serving, dedicated Rutgers employees should be treated at the end of their careers,” they wrote.

Barchi has been the target of criticism since ESPN broadcast a video of Rice hurling basketballs at players and berating them with homophobic slurs in practice. Barchi was criticized for not watching the 30-minute video when it was first turned over to the university, instead relying on the counsel of his staff, which suspended Rice rather than fire him, setting off the scandal and leading to the resignation of Tim Pernetti, the athletic director.

Then, on May 15, Barchi introduced Hermann as Rutgers’s new athletic director, selecting her for the job even though she played a central role in lawsuits at Louisville, where she was a longtime athletics administrator, and Tennessee, where she was a volleyball coach, in the 1990s. After her hiring, The Star-Ledger of Newark reported that her players at Tennessee wrote a two-page letter in 1997, saying she abused them and forced them to “endure mental cruelty.”

The revelations have led for calls for Hermann to step down before she officially begins her job June 17. But Barchi has stood by his selection of Hermann, saying her hiring was the result of a “rigorous and consultative selection process to ensure we had the best person for the position.”