A Brooklyn College history professor who panned members of an influential faculty committee as “lily white” has resigned after being elected to the panel, The Post has learned.
Associate professor Jocelyn Wills sent an e-mail to colleagues voting for members of four faculty-search committees to recruit new deans to the college. She criticized the administrative appointees on the panel as racially wrong.
“Please spread the word among your colleagues and friends on Faculty Council, that we need to correct the lily-white imbalances of the Dean’s search committees, all four of them,” Wills wrote. She then urged votes for four black and Latino faculty members.
Sources said Wills, who is white, was elected to a search committee, but not the four minorities she recommended.
Other professors blasted her stance. “It was a bald call for a race-based vote,” one insider said. “She’s on record as saying she thinks people should be selected based on skin color.”
Deans chosen by the search committees would have the power to hire new professors, award tenure and make curriculum decisions.
Brooklyn College President Karen Gould did not fault Wills, saying through a spokesman: “In all our college searches we encourage diversity, especially because our campus is so diverse.”
Spokesman Ernesto Mora said Wills stepped down from the search committee “for personal/private reasons.”
Wills did not return a call or e-mail message.