Court Opinion

ID: 9474047
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:46:23.792052+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:52.435644
License: Public Domain

COFFIN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I disagree with my brothers’ conclusion that the district court clearly erred in finding that Dr. Kumar was denied tenure because of his race and national origin.
In the very complex and nuanced environment of university tenure decisions, a discrimination case with no “smoking gun” evidence can be excruciatingly close for the district court. Because universities may deny tenure for minor reasons and for seemingly wrong reasons, the district court must take care to consider only whether *22the University denied tenure for discriminatory reasons. It must stay away from the larger question of whether the University should have denied tenure in the case. At the same time, however, it must not shrink from a finding of discrimination when appropriate, on the ground that the issue of tenure is so subjective that a court can never conclusively determine whether improper motivations played a role in the decision.
With those boundaries in mind, I am unable to say that the district court committed clear error.* Although there were, to be sure, several less than effusive descriptions of Dr. Kumar’s abilities contained in his tenure file, the overwhelming bulk of the file depicted a worthy candidate. The University apparently rested its decision largely on negative impressions of Dr. Kumar’s teaching, but much of that criticism was challenged for the simplistic evaluation process used and, more importantly, because certain evaluations suffered from possible racist taint. The district court could have found that the student conversations and evaluations that reflected a racist motivation infected the decision-making of the higher University officials. This scenario is particularly plausible in light of the University’s failure to remove the faulty Wolf Report from Dr. Kumar’s file and the absence of existing positive documents from his file at critical stages of the tenure review procedure. Reliance on these not inconsiderable factors cannot, in my opinion, be dismissed as “reliance on pure atmospherics”. Moreover, the district court had the opportunity to hear and see the witnesses — a factor which in my view my brothers too heavily discount.
The very meticulousness of my brothers’ opinions causes me to add this note of concern. Although our review must ascertain that the district court gave due deference to university decision-making, replicating in such detailed fashion the weighing of each item of evidence runs the substantial risk of leaving no room for any deference to the district court itself. My view of the evidence is that, whether or not I would agree with the district court’s conclusion, I cannot say that it was clearly erroneous.

 Like Chief Judge Campbell, I believe the proper scope of review embraces the same time frame as the district court considered. I agree with his analysis of this issue.