Opinion: Flint Professor Sues to Protect Male Privilege

FLINT, MI – University of Michigan-Flint faculty member Mark Perry filed a lawsuit against Wayne State University for hosting a coding camp for black girls.

That in itself is not surprising given his history — Perry has filed at least 35 lawsuits against Michigan universities alleging discrimination against males, according to his prideful bragging in The Detroit News. He has a track record of weaponizing lawsuits and media attention to push universities into bending to his will — notably, two years ago, Michigan State University changed the name of a women’s lounge on campus because Perry was aggrieved that men also couldn’t go in there.

Perry — who makes over $140,000 annually from UM-Flint — has a singular intent: to protect male, particularly white male, privilege in higher education. His viewpoint is so absurdly stupid, that it hardly merits a serious response. So let me start with a non-serious one — pointing and laughing at some of his Rate My Professor reviews:

He is a terrible professor. He lectures for hours from powerpoint slides provided by the textbook company (which he is friends with and mentions several times). He offers only one point of view and references his blog often. His political views are very obvious.

Wastes all his class time by talking about his blog posts.

Website dedicated to his stupid hobbies. In love with himself. Lives in fantasy world. Needs to get in touch with reality. has no sympathy for the common person’s struggle. Hard to do when you are a fat spoiled out-of touch brat.

He is extremely boring and seemed to have some build up frustration. He is practically useless when it comes to answering students questions.

Doesn’t seem to create any of his own curriculum, which should be considered academic fraud at the graduate level. Lectures are deadly boring.

Seriously, he namedrops being friends with a textbook publisher in class? What a hip dude! And I really enjoyed that The Root put him in their “Mayo-American Hall of Fame.”

But that’s immature of me. So here are a few better-formed responses.

1. Mark Perry draws a $140,000 salary in one of the poorest cities in America. Forty two percent of the University of Michigan-Flint’s student body consists of students whose families earn less than $65,000 per year and it is 24th among all Michigan colleges in median parent income, according to The New York Times. If those students are Flint residents, depending on what neighborhood their families live in, there’s a chance they still can’t drink water from the tap in their homes since the lead pipes have still not been replaced in some of the city’s poorest areas. University of Michigan-Flint is a public university. So his salary is being paid by taxpayers and tuition from a large number of students from middle class and lower families so that he can file frivolous lawsuits aimed at eliminating protections for women, show students boring PowerPoint presentations, and write riveting blog posts about the scourge that is massage therapists with long fingernails.
2. Mark Perry teaches at a university that is more than 60 percent female. This month, he said this to The Detroit News: “We’re still stuck back in the 1960s or 1970s with outdated thinking that women still need special treatment and special preferences.” Wait … I’m very curious about the “special treatment” women were getting in the 60s and 70s. And if he’s arguing that things like Title IX, scholarships, and other initiatives to provide opportunities for women have now outserved their usefullness and are depriving white men, is he really saying that, what, like, 30ish years of these things existing or being thought about in any sort of serious manner is enough to undo … I dunno … forever? I guess? … of women and minorities being excluded from opportunities?

iii.     He successfully bullied Michigan State University into changing the name of a small women’s lounge and making it a common space where men are now allowed as well. You know, the same Michigan State University that harbored a serial sexual abuser of women and complicit administrators who protected that criminal for years, not to mention an athletics program that has had its own severe issues with sexual violence against women on campus. Why would they possibly need a safe space for women???

1. While he’s attacking Wayne State for offering a Black Girls Code camp, here are a few relevant stats that I’m sure he very much considered before filing his pointless lawsuit: 95 percent of the tech workforce is white, and 76 percent of it is male (Forbes); a Brookings Institute study noted that while women’s “digital skills” have rapidly increased, their share of the “highly skilled digital” job pool has not; a Google engineer was fired after circulating a manifesto that argued, among other things, gender gaps in tech jobs exist because women are not as psychologically suited to those jobs as men; 83 percent of tech executives are white, half of Google’s and Apple’s employees are white, and unfairness/mistreatment in the work environment costs tech companies billions of dollars per year in turnover/replacement costs when those frustrated employees leave (Tech Republic).
2. College computer science departments are still overwhelmingly white according to Wired, hence the importance of pre-college programs like Black Girls Code. Despite Mark Perry’s “what about the men!” protests, colleges are actually very successful at getting white boys into computer science programs and don’t need the help of his frivolous lawsuits to bolster those efforts.
3. Seriously, he’s filed 35 lawsuits against public universities in Michigan! Hey guess what, taxpayers? Since these are public universities, you get to pay for the legal resources that universities have to devote to this frivolity. Hey guess what, college students? This frivolity helps your tuition costs go up!

I worked in higher education for eight years, including a significant amount of time at a STEM university. Every major company in America is looking for increased diversity in its workforce. Every major company in America is eager to fund tech-related pre-college opportunities for diverse students. Early exposure to concepts like coding is critical, especially for underrepresented or economically disadvantaged populations who haven’t traditionally had opportunities in STEM education and fields. Black Girls Code is an amazing national organization that every college campus in America would be proud to partner with.

Mark Perry’s contentions, as cited in The Detroit News, that women are actually over-represented on college campuses and, thus, don’t need additional measures like scholarships, specialized camps, and women-only spaces on campus, is infantile. Here are a couple of the more ridiculous passages:

At UM, women dominate in 17 out of 21 fields of study, with business and engineering being the only areas where women are underrepresented.

Hmmm … so business and engineering, the two fields of study that traditionally yield the highest paying jobs to graduates, are the “only” ones dominated by men. Got it.

“Gender discrimination has been embedded, accepted, embraced and institutionalized in higher education for decades,” Perry says.

Just want to throw this statistic out there: despite women composing the majority of students on college campuses, nearly 20 percent of women are sexually assaulted during the time they are in college. And that number is likely much higher considering the number of sexual assaults that go unreported. Oh, and female administrators are still paid less than male counterparts (Inside Higher Ed). White men hold 55 percent of full-time professor jobs nationally, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. And male faculty members are not only more likely to assign works by male authors than female authors, they also hilariously and sadly assign nearly three times more of their own published work than female faculty. Which fits with one of the Rate My Professor descriptions above of Professor Read My Blog Posts Damnit.

So no, Mark Perry, discrimination against white men has not been an “embedded, institutionalized” issue in higher ed. Higher ed mirrors the rest of society, where it has been substantially easier for mediocre white men to advance than anyone.

Sadly, based on my anecdotal experience in universities, Mark Perrys aren’t uncommon, he just happens to be more media savvy than others I’ve encountered. I’ve witnessed tenured male faculty dominate or actively belittle or resort to passive aggressive tactics to derail meetings or silence voices of female colleagues. I’ve heard horror stories from female colleagues about the behavior of men on tenure committees who made the process exceedingly difficult for them. I’ve seen men openly scoff at being open to or showing empathy to the experiences of marginalized or underrepresented groups of students. Not all of the male colleagues I’ve worked with have done these things, but an emboldened and vocal enough minority of them certainly wield enough power to make things hell for those with good intentions.

It is disappointing that Mark Perry is allowed to use his position at a great university in a community that I love to gain media attention to attack marginalized groups. It is disappointing that he continuously finds media outlets who give him a platform and are complicit in his attacks. And it is doubly disappointing that he’s protected by a tenure system that often enables bullies rather than protects academic freedom.