Community College Professor Disciplined For Criticizing DEI Receives Multi-Million Dollar Settlement

 A formerly tenured history professor at a community college in California will receive a multi-million dollar settlement after being investigated and disciplined for criticizing the school’s social justice initiatives.

Matthew Garrett, who previously taught at Bakersfield College, was fired last year following allegations of racial discrimination – which The Daily Wire proved were untrue. He and the school have now agreed to a $2.4 million settlement, The College Fix reported.

Garrett will receive $2,245,480 spread out over the next 20 years through monthly payments – which amounts to just over $9,000 a month. He will also receive an immediate one-time payment of $154,520 as “compensation for back wages and medical benefits since [his] dismissal,” the settlement agreement says.

For his part, Garrett agreed to resign from his position with the Kern Community College District, and administrators for the KCCD will withdraw and seal any accusations against him regarding “unprofessional conduct.”

“After five years of administrative misconduct, a decisive courtroom display exonerated me of all allegations and exposed that Kern Community College District engaged in flagrant retaliation for my questioning of partisan policies and wasteful expenditures,” Garrett told the Fix in an email. “Facing an imminent ruling in my favor and the prospect of paying millions of dollars in damages, KCCD had only one viable option: settlement. I am grateful to the many who stood by my side during this difficult time and invite them to join in our triumph.”

Garrett’s troubles began in 2019 when he defended free speech on campus, which some claimed was offensive.

During a meeting on December 13, 2022, John Corkins, vice president of the KCCD, threatened to take conservative faculty “to the slaughterhouse” based on false allegations of racism leveled against Garrett and a colleague from an October 11, 2022, diversity meeting.

The allegations centered around claims made by students who attended the meeting in support of professor Paula Parks, who obtained her doctorate in philosophy at Capella University and runs Bakersfield’s Umoja ASTEP program, described on its website as “a program that integrates academics, support services and African-American culture.”

After that meeting, Parks’ students began publicly claiming that their mentor was smeared by Matthew Garrett, who has a doctorate in American history from Arizona State University and teaches history and ethnic studies at Bakersfield. One student, Jordyn Davis, submitted a written comment to Bakersfield’s academic senate with an alleged direct quote of Garrett saying, “Dr. Parks’ way of teaching is not…” and saying this made her feel “a mixture of confusion and concern.”

In additional comments to the KCCD Board of Trustees in December, Davis claimed that Garrett “went on to insult Dr. Parks,” which she insisted “felt very personal and came from a place of hate.” In both instances, Davis began her remarks by saying Garrett “insisted” that a survey purporting to show students of color experienced “racial stress,” “race-based physical aggression,” and “microaggressions” was incorrect.

Audio of the October 11 meeting, in which Garrett was alleged to have made the comments, shows that Garrett did ask whether the underlying survey was valid and suggested doing another survey since the original was conducted during the pandemic when students weren’t on campus. He also suggested at the beginning of his comments that he was “concerned about repeated appeals to popularity as evidence of truth” and indicated to Andrea Thorson, Bakersfield’s dean of instruction, that she teaches in her class that this is bad logic. But he did not mention Parks during his remarks.

Two other students also submitted comments to the academic senate. One claimed she felt “very uncomfortable” after walking into the room and seeing “a few of the faculty’s faces.” She also claimed that she “felt” that if she were to take those professors’ classes, she “would fail in the classes because of the color of my skin.”

Another accusation centered around comments made by Ximena Da Silva Tavares, a research assistant who received her doctor of philosophy from Caltech. Parks read an accusation from a student at the December board meeting who claimed Da Silva Tavares said during the October meeting that racism doesn’t exist. Da Silva Tavares brought up her own concerns about how the survey showing students of color were the victims of racism on campus was collected and whether there really was an issue of racism on campus. She ended her remarks by saying she and other professors “question the solutions of the problems” and “question even the problems that you’re saying that we have.”

When asked about the allegations against Garrett and other members of the diversity committee, Parks spoke about the “trauma” her students endured at the meeting.

“When I take students to a campus committee meeting, I want them to be positively educated about how an educational institution works, not traumatized and questioning whether they want to enter the profession,” Parks said.

Parks was then asked how her students were “traumatized.” She didn’t respond.

“Call me old fashioned but I believe in truth and evidence-based reasoning,” Garrett told The Daily Wire last year. “In an age of emotional incontinence we need to remember that while feelings do matter they cannot displace facts.”