Associate professor of accounting Qintao Fan is suing the University of Oregon for $6 million, alleging that the then-dean of the Lundquist College of Business discounted her publication materials and positive external review letters when considering her for a tenure promotion. The suit was filed on Jan. 27.
In 2016, Fan was hired within the Lundquist College of Business in a tenure-track position. Fan obtained a Ph.D. from Stanford University and has held positions at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with several academic publications in journals.
The tenure process at UO has several levels of review: The department, in this case the LCB, prepares the file and seeks out external reviews, and once external reviews are submitted, the department conducts a review through a personnel committee report and then votes on the award of tenure.
When Fan was first hired, she was given four years of credit toward tenure. At that time, the department chair, Dr. David Guenther, stated that Fan’s publication record was consistent with and met the LCB tenure expectations. Assuming she would get positive external reviews, she had already satisfied tenure standards, court documents allege.
The LCB tenure requirements, as outlined by the United Academics collective bargaining agreement, state that applicants must have a “significant record of high-quality scholarly contributions to his or her field.”
In 2017, Fan applied for tenure. The then-dean, Sarah Nutter, did not recommend Fan for tenure and recommended she withdraw her application and strengthen her pipeline of ongoing research. Despite this, court documents allege that Nutter said that she agreed that the “quantity of published work is comparable to successful tenure cases in accounting at peer institutions.”
As recommended, Fan withdrew her application to strengthen ongoing research. That same year, another theorist in the department, a white female, was granted tenure based on a primary review of three journal publications. The interim dean at the time, Bruce Blonigen, recommended tenure for that theorist. Court documents allege this confirmed to Fan that her publication record was in line with LCB tenure standards.
In 2023, Fan applied for tenure again. Dean Blonigen reviewed the application in January 2024 and determined that her number of publications was “too low” to meet tenure expectations. Court documents allege that Blonigen “heavily discounted” Fan’s eight positive external review letters that all supported her receiving tenure. Blonigen agreed with LCB committee votes that Fan’s teaching performance met expectations but remained in favor of denying tenure based on her research publications.
In March 2024, the UO Faculty Personnel Committee, made up of 11 faculty members from various departments, unanimously recommended that Fan be granted tenure. Court documents allege the committee reported discrepancies between the dean and the department’s statements and the letters from external reviewers.
“The FPC found this unjustifiable: The department mishandled its letter request and then used the predictable result to discount all eight strongly supportive letters,” the FPC stated in its report.
The report went on to say that the LCB department and dean’s recommendation against tenure was based “entirely on an unwritten, informal and inconsistently applied criteria” that did not specify numerical requirements for publication in certain journals, which the department and dean were “circumventing” by referring to “specific but unwritten requirements.”
Fan’s tenure was denied by Interim Provost and Senior Vice President Karen Ford in June 2024. Fan appealed this denial pursuant to Article 21, Section 2 of UA’s CBA. In January 2025, Fan presented to the Tenure Track Review Appeals Decision Committee. The next month, TTRAC issued a report that concluded there were irregularities and procedural questions associated with Fan’s tenure denial.
TTRAC specifically noted that it was “deeply concerned” with the subjective nature of the business college’s policy for tenure requirements, which has no required number of publications, and said that such practices of referring to specific but unwritten policy are “open to bias and subject to manipulation.”
Finally, TTRAC said that there were allegations of departmental bias, citing that Fan is a woman of color in the business college.
“Given her status in a predominantly white school and unit, one would hope that the LCB would have taken great pains to follow every procedure closely and adhere to the letter of its policies — instead we found the exact opposite,” the statement read.
Provost Christopher Long upheld Interim Provost Ford’s decision to deny Fan tenure in March 2025, and in April, President Karl Scholz issued a letter stating that Fan’s case was consistent with university and business school policies but would not issue a final decision until the Office of Investigations and Civil Rights Compliance completed its internal investigation.
The OICRC issued its report in July 2025, concluding that UO did not violate UO’s policy prohibiting discrimination.
Fan’s lawsuit claims she was qualified for tenure and her denial of tenure was under circumstances that “give rise to an inference that her Asian race” was a motivating factor in the tenure denial.
UO spokesperson Angela Seydel said in a statement to The Daily Emerald, “The university disagrees with the lawsuit’s allegations and will address them in the court proceedings. All tenure decisions are made pursuant to robust and well-established processes. In light of the pending litigation, we cannot provide additional information at this time.”
Steve Scarich • Feb 16, 2026 at 4:56 am
The University is in a ‘no-win’ situation, as far as I can tell. It is impossible to have totally objective standards for tenure decisions, because there cannot be a truly accurate standard for the quality of published research. Anybody who knows much about academia knows that the whole concept of ‘peer-review’ is a joke. There is so much competitiveness, rivalry and subjectivity regarding research that the public is being duped by the media’s reliance on peer-review as some standard of excellence. And, the faculty committee is just as biased toward granting tenure; they have no skin in the game (they are not going to pay her big salary jump), so they are going to back her appeal. So, it is pretty likely that the UO is going to lose at trial, and it will cost them a bunch of money. They would be better off negotiating a separation agreement and paying her $250,000 or whatever if they truly do not respect her scholarship. I have no good solution to this mess; due to the very nature of academic entitlement, it will always be a subjective determination as to granting tenure.
notarobot • Feb 13, 2026 at 8:09 am
“we investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing”… the university’s very favorite line.
Anonymous • Feb 13, 2026 at 7:52 am
Spokesperson Angela Seydel is of course blowing smoke then she says “we cannot provide additional information at this time.” There is no law that prevents UO from commenting on lawsuits (except narrow constraints relating to employee confidentiality) and they do it all the time when it suits their legal strategy. An honest spokesperson would just say “we choose not to comment further”
EmeraldReader222 • Feb 12, 2026 at 9:20 am
I hope Fan wins. Especially with the inconsistencies and references to vague and non-written policy and guidelines. (Which, if there were these qualifications to meet, should have been expressed in writing at the time of Fan’s hiring). It is deeply concerning a POC woman professor is being put through hoop after hoop to jump through by UO, starting in 2017 (almost a 10 year ‘battle’), while a white woman was granted tenure without all those hoops (open and shut for her). The damning evidence is the inconsistent communication, that her work is strong and would qualify for tenure, but is simultaneously not strong enough. If this was a student working on their final project or dissertation, would the UO keep telling the student they are on track, only to keep telling them when they submit their final that it is not sufficient? Unclear standard that are not applied evenly to all is the definition of bias. If Fan does not win, I hope she will find an academic home that values her work and contributions. Thank you for reporting on this so clearly.