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Dr Tabia Lee, a former director at California’s De Anza College in Cupertino, claimed that she was fired from her job after she questioned the “orthodoxy” surrounding several anti-racism campus policies and what the term meant for the college.
Lee joined as the director at De Anza’s Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multicultural Education in 2021. She joined the nonprofit organization, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), after losing her job at the community college.
FAIR shared a video on Twitter on January 16, featuring Tabia Lee and how she became a part of the organization. In the video, Lee spoke about encountering a lot of hostility and resistance to her asking questions about anti-racism language and policy efforts.
She further explained that she only wanted to know what the people of De Anza College meant when they used those terms. Lee added:
“And as I started to look around who else was questioning, I discovered FAIR.”
Dr Tabia Lee was labeled a white supremacist and accused of “whitesplaining”
Dr Tabia Lee alleged that the college authorities dismissed her from her job after she declined to join a socialist network and also struggled to execute a Jewish inclusion event in the school. Lee also made objections to De Anza’s land acknowledgements of indigenous tribes.
Dr Tabia Lee, a black director herself, also questioned why the letter ‘B’ in Black is capitalized but not the letter ‘w’ in white. She claimed that when she asked the college about how they defined terms like anti-racism, she was labeled a right-wing extremist by her colleagues.
Lee said that she was subjected to the resentment of the administration as well as the student body of the college for refusing to use gender-neutral terms like “Filipinx” and “Latinx” because she believed that these terms only fuel racism.
Tabia Lee explained:
“I find that the same toxic ideologies around race ideologies are now being advanced under gender ideologies.”
She opined that the constant obsession with gender pronouns and their declaration creates deep discomfort for people who struggle with gender dysphoria or identify as gender fluid. Lee added:
"I found these terms to be linguistic imperialism and an inappropriate attempt to make beautiful languages conform to English-speaking social norms."
Dr. Tabia Lee was also accused by one of her colleagues of "whitesplaining" and "white speaking," and was also branded a white supremacist.
However, the college showed a very different reason for laying Dr Tabia Lee off. District Chancellor Judy Miner sent a letter to Higher Ed and wrote that Lee was persistently unable to cooperate with her co-workers and staff and showed an unwillingness to welcome constructive criticism. On Tuesday, March 7, De Anza College voted not to re-employ Lee for the next academic year.
Dr Tabia Lee alleged that she received backlash from college administrators shortly after joining her position as a director in 2021. She claimed that after she published her essay in the “Journal of Free Black Thought” on February 18, the college finally got hold of a reason to fire her.
Lee stated in her essay:
“Under the banner of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, in many learning environments, a neo-reconstructionist race(ist) orthodoxy has emerged that actively works to suppress and exclude alternative frameworks, methods, ways and means for dealing with American education’s race(ist) problem.”
Dr Tabia Lee told Higher Ed that she was considering filing a lawsuit against the college and was receiving support from FAIR. Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly is among the group’s board members.
Leigh Ann O’Neill, a lawyer for FAIR, said that Tabia Lee’s objective to encourage diversity of viewpoints, discussions, and open inquiries was important.
Lee said that she received guidance on supporting what she addressed as the “third-wave anti-racist ideology.”
Dr Tabia Lee attended the University of California at Davis from 1997 to 1999, where she pursued her Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology and social deviance. She acquired her Master’s degree from the University of Phoenix in 2004. She specialized in education, curriculum, instruction, and crosscultural language and academic development.
Tabia Lee received her Doctorate degree in Urban Educational Leadership and Administration from the University of California, Irvine, in 2009.
