Exclusive: Chinese-American Professor Sues Southern Methodist University over Discrimination & Retaliation by Indian Professors
"The Accounting Department granted tenure to 100 percent of Indian-origin candidates, while denying tenure to 100 percent of non-Indian candidates."
No media outlet has noticed this lawsuit yet, filed by Dr. Sean Wang, an Assistant Professor of Accounting at SMU’s Cox School of Business:
Wang’s undergrad degree is from Duke, and he earned Masters degrees from NYU and South Florida, and a PhD from Cornell.
His lawsuit is 18 pages long.
It begins on page 1 by asserting that SMU has a systemic problem with race discrimination and retaliation that violates the Civil Rights Act, and then spends the next 17 pages building that argument.
I reached out to SMU for comment, but did not receive a response.
Clearing the Bar for Tenure
At its core, this case is simple: Sean Wang was denied tenure in 2024.
In April 2025, Wang filed a complaint to the President appealing the tenure decision and claiming discrimination, and in May 2025, the President denied the appeal.
SMU’s own standards are not ambiguous. The Cox School’s Promotion and Tenure Manual sets a clear benchmark: “at least four top-tier publications.”
Wang obliterated that standard… this was not a borderline case.
SMU is a respectable but not elite institution, ranked #88 nationally, and its tenure bar is clearly defined. By those standards, Wang’s record is exceptional. Far from a marginal candidate, his output more closely resembles that of a full professor at a significantly higher-ranked school.
By the time of his tenure review, he had published ten articles in top-tier journals (e.g. Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, and Management Science)—more than double the output of any other faculty member in the department at the time of their tenure decision.
His publications garnered nearly 2,000 citations, exceeding the citation count of all three Indian professors granted tenure in the Accounting department.
Nevertheless, SMU denied him tenure due to “bad fit” and repeatedly said that he needed “more citations” and “more visibility.” Between the 2023 and 2024 annual reviews, Dr. Wang was called a "bad fit" at least thirteen times by his Chair and Dean. SMU’s Associate Provost, Dr. Paige Ware, acknowledges in the lawsuit that “one of the cautionary alarm bells for anyone who’s looking at DEI is the word fit… that elusive word ‘fit’ that spits in the face of data.”
The “bad fit” contrast becomes sharper when Wang’s case is compared to his colleague, Sorabh Tomar (Indian). At the time of his third-year review, Tomar had ZERO publications, yet received a positive mid-career evaluation from the department chair (Indian). No concerns about “fit” were raised—even though his work, like Wang’s, involved behavioral research using experimental methods and collaboration with the same co-authors.
On its Faculty Permission to Hire Form, SMU recorded Dr. Wang as “White” in its HR and EEO records, erasing his self-identified minority status and treating him as a white man so that they may more easily discriminate against him.
Testimony From 4 SMU Professors
Testimony from the lawsuit:
Prof. Robin Pinkley (Janet & Craig Duchossois Endowed Professor of Management & Organizations, SMU)—a 35-year veteran of Cox who has served on numerous P&T committees—wrote to Dean Myers that the Department’s reliance on “fit” is “self-serving” and “does not stand up when compared to the empirical evidence provided by top-tier publications, citation counts, and invitations to speak at Harvard, London Business School, Kellogg, Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon.” Prof. Pinkley concluded that “Sean Wang’s case was not treated in an unbiased manner consistent with the P&T document and our commitment to equity,” and warned that the current leadership’s pattern of bias “should not be tolerated.”
Prof. Pab Jotikashtira (Full Professor of Finance, SMU; member, Provost’s Advisory Committee on Tenure & Promotion) compared Dr. Wang’s record with the two Indian professors most recently tenured in Accounting. Prof. Jotikashtira found that Dr. Wang is “very significantly more productive than Gauri Bhat” and has “a comparable record to Neil Bhattacharya, who is ten years his senior,” adding that “any reasonable person would deem Sean’s citation count as more than sufficient for tenure.” Prof. Jotikashtira dismissed the Department’s quality and “fit” objections as “personal taste” and “absurd,” noting that the career success of ten top-tier publications “cannot be due to luck” given the less than ten percent acceptance rates in those journals.
Prof. Jeff Hales (Charles T. Zlatkovich Centennial Professor of Accounting, University of Texas at Austin) described Dr. Wang as “an outstanding researcher with few comparable peers.” Benchmarking against recent promotions at top-twenty business schools, Prof. Hales wrote that Dr. Wang’s 11 peer-reviewed articles (10 Financial Times Top 50 Journals) and nearly 2,000 citations would already match the average full-professor dossier, and that Dr. Wang has “more citations than I had at a similar point in my career.” He concluded that SMU hired Dr. Wang “to do exactly this kind of research—and he delivered.”
Prof. David Wood (Glenn D. Ardis Professor of Accounting, Brigham Young University) noted that SMU’s claim that Dr. Wang did not meet the research standards as “ludicrous” and that Dr. Wang met the research bar for full even for top 20 schools.
Discrimination by Desai
On November 19, 2024, Dr. Hemang Desai, Chair of the Accounting Department, informed Dr. Wang of a negative departmental vote (3–1). All three Indian faculty members voted against tenure, citing a failure to achieve “outstanding” performance, while the sole non-Indian faculty member voted in favor.
Wang’s complaint repeatedly alleges that, from the start of his employment, Desai held him to different and more demanding standards than his Indian colleagues.
Since at least 2006, when Hemang Desai (an Indian-Origin faculty member) became a full professor in SMU’s Cox School of Business, the Accounting Department granted tenure to 100 percent of Indian-origin candidates (two of two) who met the published “four top-tier publications” standard, while denying tenure to 100 percent of non-Indian candidates (zero of five) who met the same standard … This pattern is consistent with an ancestry-based preference for Indian-origin candidates and disfavor toward non-Indian candidates. … Dr. Wang’s research productivity significantly exceeds that of his tenured Indian colleagues in the department when they received tenure.”
The filing also includes a more unusual claim: in Spring 2024, when offices were reassigned in the department’s new building, Wang alleges they were “segregated” along ethnic lines— Indian faculty were handed prime offices with nice views, while East Asian faculty were assigned to a Chinese ghetto down the hall.
When I googled Desai’s name, this was the first review that popped up:
Notably, Desai’s son graduated from SMU in 2024 with a degree in business, and was recommended (I wonder by who?) by the school to receive Poets and Quants’ “Best and Brightest Business Major” award.
In that interview, his son described yet another award from SMU: “The achievement I’m most proud of is being selected as a Don Jackson Fellow for the Alternative Asset Management Center Program here at SMU.”
Gee, I wonder how his son got picked to Don Jackson Fellows for the Alternative Asset Management Center Program at SMU Cox... And how he got such a glowing recommendation from Jim Bryan, the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs at SMU Cox...
Jim Bryan: “The best students in every school are the ones who don’t just succeed in the classroom, but who strive to make the school better when they leave. Mohan Desai is one of the best examples of this concept I’ve ever seen... I can’t think of anyone better to mentor our new students than Mohan. No matter where he goes after graduation, I want Mohan wearing SMU Cox gear—there can be no greater advertisement for SMU Cox’s student body than Mohan Desai.”
While every father is proud of his son, the optics of the Department Chair's child sweeping competitive internal awards while the department's most productive professor is labeled a 'bad fit' are, at best, a conflict of interest.
My point isn’t to attack Desai’s son, it’s to highlight a pattern the lawsuit alleges: nepotism. A fish must swim; a beaver must build dams; a bird must fly; a fresh-off-the-boat Indian must hire and promote their own caste. Indians are famously one of the most nepotistic ethnic group in America, it’s just what they do, it is clearly how their culture operates, as documented in thousands of other lawsuits and articles, e.g.:
Across India, Nepotism as a Way of Life (New York Times, 2012)
Tech giant accused of hiring bias in favor of Indian workers (World of Labour, 2017)
The US says Oracle is encouraging Indians to hire other Indians—and it’s killing diversity (Quartz, 2022)
‘Indian students preferred’: Discriminatory rental ads have people shying away from applying (CBC, 2020)
Punjab Health Foundation’s hiring scandal exposes systemic nepotism epidemic (Samaa, 2023)
Insiders Tel How IT Giant was intentionally discriminating against non-Indian workers (Bloomberg, 2024)
The Public Timeline Of The Cisco Caste Discrimination Case (2024)
‘Nepotism never fails’: Indian-origin FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam draws flak over H-1B hiring (Times of India, 2025)
Nepotism: The Silent Killer of Merit in India’s Legal Landscape (Hindu College Gazette, 2025)
‘This is why Indians are being hated’, US techies claim Indians taking high-paying jobs, ‘it’s nepotism’ (Financial Express, 2025)
A White Man in the Indian-Dominated Tech Sector (American Renaissance, 2025)
Indian nepotism in the software industry explained by an insider, parts I-III (Reddit, 2025)
SMU’s Response
The university’s response filing is sparse, offering little substantive detail or point-by-point rebuttal. SMU denies the allegations in full and asserts that Dr. Wang is not entitled to any relief.
Trial is scheduled to begin on February 1, 2027.
Wang is seeking preliminary and permanent injunctive relief requiring SMU to:
Grant Dr. Wang tenure and promotion to Associate Professor;
Grant Dr. Wang an expedited, conflict-free review for promotion to Full Professor with appropriate retroactive compensation adjustments if the fact-finder determines Dr. Wang's qualifications warranted such promotion at the time tenure was denied;
Cease discriminatory practices in tenure and promotion decisions;
Implement and enforce written policies prohibiting the use of subjective “fit” criteria in tenure decisions.
Breaking up any and all race based hiring cartels is a service to humanity.
one of the things that is horrible but hugely entertaining about your work is the way that greediness is the fatal flaw. Be a nepotist, sure, but maybe DON'T give every department award to your son AND tank the tenure app of the handsome Chad East Asian who outperforms everybody in his faculty cohort
Be a crooked journal editor, sure, but don't pretend you are a co-author on dozens and dozens of papers published in your own journal and /or with authors who publish in your journal
I mean ideally don't be nepotistic or crooked. But if you must and you don't want to get caught, don't be so GREEDY when you do.