The governing board of a major state university repeatedly bypassed highly qualified female leadership to install hand-picked male candidates, including one man who didn’t even apply for the fucking job.
By discarding competitive hiring practices and ignoring their own qualifications criteria, these officials treated a public institution like a private club. This case exposes how those in power use legal shields to avoid accountability for blatant favoritism and gender-based exclusion. 🛑
Read on to see how the system protects the powerful at the expense of equity.
Institutional Misconduct 📉
The leadership at Jackson State University (JSU) faced a reckoning after a senior administrator, Debra Mays Jackson, exposed a pattern of sex discrimination. Despite holding multiple advanced degrees and serving as Vice President and Chief of Staff, Jackson watched as the Board of Trustees repeatedly installed less-qualified men into the presidency. The misconduct centers on a deliberate abandonment of transparent, competitive hiring processes to ensure a specific gendered hierarchy remained intact.
Timeline of Institutional Failure ⏳
| Date | Event | The Breakdown of Governance |
| Feb 2020 | President Steps Down | The Board appoints a male assistant, who reported to Jackson, as interim president. |
| Late 2020 | Permanent Appointment | The Board cancels a national search and votes to hire the male interim permanently, despite his admission that he was unqualified. |
| 2021 | EEOC Filing | Jackson files a formal charge of sex discrimination regarding the bypassed hiring process. |
| March 2023 | Leadership Crisis | The male president is placed on leave. A new “search” begins. |
| Late 2023 | The Final Betrayal | Jackson is denied even an interview. The Board hires Marcus Thompson, a man who never applied for the role and had zero university administrative experience. |
Deregulation and the Death of Merit 🏗️
Governance often shifts away from rigid, transparent standards toward “flexibility” that serves those at the top under neoliberal institutionalism.
The Board exercised this by dispensing with national searches and declining to solicit applications.
This regulatory vacuum allowed the Board to ignore Jackson’s extensive experience (including her time running the university in the president’s absence) in favor of candidates who fit their internal social mold. By removing the guardrails of competitive hiring, the Board turned a public oversight role into a mechanism for gatekeeping.
The Social Cost of Governance Failures 👥
The decisions made by the Board reflect a governance structure that prioritizes the preservation of an existing power dynamic over the health of the institution. When Marcus Thompson was hired, he had held his doctorate for less than six months and lacked any university administrative background. Choosing him over a seasoned female vice president sends a clear message: institutional loyalty and gender identity carry more weight than professional excellence. This extraction of value from a dedicated worker (who continued to perform her duties while being systematically denied advancement) is a classic hallmark of late-stage institutional exploitation.
The Shield of Qualified Immunity🛡️
Powerful people in positions of power often use “Qualified Immunity” to block lawsuits, arguing that their actions didn’t violate “clearly established law.” The individual board members in this case attempted to use this shield to avoid personal liability for their votes.
This tactic illustrates a common systemic strategy: using complex legal doctrines to neutralize the severity of personal misconduct. By framing their discriminatory votes as “discretionary acts,” they sought to make themselves untouchable, even when their actions directly contradicted the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Wealth Disparity and the Extraction of Labor 💰
The Board’s conduct highlights a profound disparity in how labor is valued. Jackson provided the “chief of staff” labor that kept the university running during leadership transitions, yet the financial and social rewards of the presidency were reserved for men with fewer qualifications.
This mirrors broader economic patterns where marginalized groups perform the essential “maintenance” work of a system while being structurally barred from the highest levels of compensation and authority.
Breaking the Cycle 🔄
To prevent this brand of institutional predation, public boards require radical transparency. Ending the “interim-to-permanent” pipeline without a search, mandating independent audits of hiring decisions, and stripping the shield of immunity for intentional discrimination are essential steps. Public institutions will continue to function as private playgrounds for those already in power until such a time that individual decision-makers face the actual costs of their discriminatory choices
Frivolous or Serious Lawsuit? ⚖️
This is a deadly serious legal challenge in my very humble opinion. The evidence shows a repeated, documented bypass of a highly qualified female candidate in favor of men who either admitted they weren’t ready for the job or didn’t bother to apply.
💡 Explore Corporate Misconduct by Category
Corporations harm people every day — from wage theft to pollution. Learn more by exploring key areas of injustice.
- 💀 Product Safety Violations — When companies risk lives for profit.
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- 💼 Labor Exploitation — Wage theft, worker abuse, and unsafe conditions.
- 🛡️ Data Breaches & Privacy Abuses — Misuse and mishandling of personal information.
- 💵 Financial Fraud & Corruption — Lies, scams, and executive impunity.
