A conditionally-offered faculty member in the Department of Communication will not be coming to Fresno State, the university said Thursday.

The prospective faculty member, CV Vitolo-Haddad, was to become an assistant professor in fall 2021 in the department and the director of forensics, who traditionally leads the university’s Barking Bulldogs debate team.

Vitolo-Haddad was expected to lead the forensics program, replacing Douglas Fraleigh, and grow the competitive policy debate, individual events competition and public advocacy components of the program, according to an email sent by Kevin Macy-Ayotte in June.

This move was one of a series of changes to the forensics and debate program that included the replacement of Director of Debate for the Fresno State Barking Bulldogs Tom Boroujeni with faculty member Natalie Meany for the 2020-21 academic year. 

Meany would teach COMM 115 for all students interested in forensics or debate in fall 2020 and spring 2021, according to the email.

In that email, Macy-Ayotte praised Vitolo-Haddad.

“I believe we have the ideal director of forensics coming soon to develop Fresno State’s forensics program into one that is not only nationally and regionally competitive,” Macy-Atyotte said in the email. “But also, and perhaps more importantly, can become a national leader and example of the commitment to inclusion and social justice that marks Fresno State as a whole and our department specifically.”

The search opened for a tenure-track director of forensics last academic year and was closed as soon as the conditional offer was extended to Vitolo-Haddad, according to Macy-Ayotte.

“The university extended a conditional tenure-track job offer for fall 2021 to CV Vitolo-Haddad,” the university said in a statement. “The conditional offer, which was subject to completion of California State University background check procedures, was made prior to the allegations that have since surfaced publicly. We can confirm that CV Vitolo-Haddad will not be a faculty member at Fresno State.”

Vitolo-Haddad, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, identified themselves Black and Latinx on numerous occasions. These instances were detailed in an anonymous Medium post on Sept. 4.

Vitolo-Haddad admitted that they are southern Italian/Sicilian.

Subsequently, Vitolo-Haddad released two apology posts released on Sept. 6 and Sept. 11 through Medium. In the posts, they also announced that they were leaving their position as co-president of the UW-Madison’s Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA).

In the Sept. 6 post, they said in response to friends, loved ones and organizing comrades, “I am so deeply sorry for the ways you are hurting right now because of me.”

“I have let guesses about my ancestry become answers I wanted but couldn’t prove. I have let people make assumptions when I should have corrected them,” Vitolo Haddad said.

In the Sept. 11 post, Vitolo-Haddad said, “When asked if I identify as Black, my answer should have always been ‘No.’ There were three separate instances I said otherwise,”  They said they should’ve been clear and honest about how they identify and should not have adopted any identity outside of what they know.

“I should have never entered Black organizing spaces,” Vitolo-Haddad said. “They are not my place. Once realizing this, it wasn’t sufficient to just leave; I should have explained that directly to the people who invited me and clarified my identity.”

Vitolo-Haddad also apologized for “lies about Cuban roots at face value, and for subsequently attaching myself to people’s perceptions of me as though it would provide answers where there are none.” 

The TAA Executive Board and Racial Justice Committee said in a statement they condemn Vitolo-Haddad’s appropriation of Black and Brown identities. 

“We cannot speak for CV, but we as TAA leaders are profoundly sorry for the harm they have caused members of the Madison community by claiming Black and Brown identities, using those identities to silence and alienate activists in organizing spaces, and manipulating and gaslighting Black and Brown community members who tried holding them accountable,” the statement said. “The TAA enabled this harm by electing them to a position of power in our union: we have unknowingly rewarded the toxic opportunism of performing Blackness.”

Within the department, Boroujeni said he found the moves made within the debate and forensic program puzzling, especially his own removal given his experience.

Boroujeni was the director of debate from the fall of 2016 until the spring of 2020 and one of only two coaches in Fresno State history to lead the team to its second National Debate Tournament qualification.

“The news has brought embarrassment to Fresno State in the debate community because no reason was offered for my removal,” Boroujeni said. “It is quite interesting that everyone involved in this except me, the provost and the president are white people with institutional power who removed me, a person of color, from a job that I was doing exceedingly well and replaced me with a white person with no experience.”

Written by Zaeem Shaikh and Anthony De Leon