Charnan Williams, a postdoctoral fellow in history at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, has sued the Ivy League institution, claiming administrators created a hostile work environment and discriminated against her on the basis of race and sex, according to a report from Human Resources Director.
According to Dr. Williams, she was hired in July 2023 as a postdoctoral fellow, with the intent to convert to a tenure-track faculty role after two years; however, on May 29, 2025, Dartmouth’s dean of faculty, Elizabeth Smith, terminated Dr. Williams’s appointment, effective June 30, 2025. Dr. Williams says she was notified of her termination just one day after department administrators had approved a course she had developed and planned to teach.
This course was planned months in advance, and Dr. Williams says she confirmed her Spring 2025 teaching plans several times via emails, office scheduling forms, and the curriculum committee. Darrin McMahon, history department chair, ignored these approvals, according to the lawsuit, and kept Dr. Williams’s course off the spring schedule, along with support from Matthew Delmont, associate dean of interdisciplinary studies, and Benjamin Valentino, associate dean of social sciences.
Weeks before her termination, Dr. Williams received an annual review that called her work “inadequate,” but the review did not include several of Dr. Williams’s publications and a fellowship from the Huntington Library. After she raised grievances with her review, Dr. Williams says Dartmouth denied her complaint and treated her appointment as probationary. Dartmouth then reported to the New Hampshire Unemployment Security Office that Dr. Williams was fired for performance issues, but according to Dr. Williams, the office ruled in her favor, finding no misconduct on her part.
Furthermore, Dr. Williams’s husband, Marvin Chochotte, an assistant professor in Dartmouth’s department of African American studies, raised complaints on May 21, 2025, regarding the misconduct directed towards his wife, who was subsequently fired eight days later.
Dr. Williams also says she was the target of inappropriate misconduct from Dr. McMahon since the beginning of her postdoctoral position. She claims Dr. McMahon told her, in October 2023, that he saw her as a “daughter” and himself as a “father figure.” The following week, he also made sexually inappropriate comments at a department dinner, according to the suit.
As part of her lawsuit, Dr. Williams is seeking back pay, front pay or reinstatement, compensatory damages, attorney fees, and an injunction requiring Dartmouth to implement policies and training to prevent future discrimination and retaliation.
Before I proceed, I must ask Dr. Charnan Williams (DCW) was she even remotely surprised in what happened with that department given the explicit resistance to her approval for her course? Even though we know DCW’s course would have mentally cleansed the minds of the misinformed and racist White faculty and especially White students at Dartmouth.
When DCW received her woefully subjective and borderline racist performance evaluation, did she finally admit that it was due to pure institutional and structural racism or did she try to remain politically correct. What I find very interesting is that the White faculty her were evaluating DCW has intellectually weak publications that literally maintain intellectual hegemony.
Let’s examine Darin McMahon’s work. His work is the epitome of haphazard and insecure writing for the maintaining of Eurocentrism with a US context. Further, Elizabeth Smith is not even remotely qualified to evaluate DCW’s work on any substantive level. As such, this is a classic example of an intellectually insecure White academic who probably was shaken to core after reviewing DCW’s work and let alone her ideological framework that was probably the polar opposite of Elizabeth Smith.
Unfortunately, it appears that DCW and her husband must hail from an African or Caribbean immigrant background because no native Black American would ever allow anyone to be “sexually harassing” their wife without a swift and aggressive response. For those who dissent, you need to remember that one should never be nice towards those who are not nice to you. Further, I found it very interesting that DCW somehow failed to use the phraseology of race or racism. I wonder why.
As such, its quite apparent that Dartmouth will easily lose this case by DCW and her husband starting with retaliation, sexual harassment, and hostile work environment. The question that needs to be asked to DCW and her husband, why would you want to return to a place where your intellectual work and presence is not valued.
A few years back they fired a Black professor in the same department. Shortly thereafter, an infamous report emerged:
https://vtdigger.org/2020/07/20/hundreds-of-black-faculty-students-say-dartmouth-college-is-racially-hostile/
Dartmouth is a beastial environment, where White Supremacy reigns unchecked. Having known Black students, staff and faculty who made the mistake of stepping foot in that KKK stronghold, I have heard nothing but woe — and that is a mild analysis. One Black student was told by a married White professor that he was the most brilliant White man he would ever meet, and he needed to appreciate that he would bother giving him any attention, before then telling the student how beautiful he was. The student dropped the course, only for the racist bovine to make his life hell until he graduated. Who would believe a Black student over a White professor at Dartmouth. Nobody. Blacks need to boycott the College on all levels.
It sounds like ole racist William Legge and Reverend Eleazar Wheelock spirits are still alive and running rampant at the core of Dartmouth even in 2026. The facts remain; the so-called native born Black American community should just stay away from these white academic cesspools and stop seeking validation from the White power superstructure.