racism in academia?

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Kind of a long story, but this is interesting. I'm a student at MIT, and right now there is a junior professor who is on a hunger strike, to protest what he sees as personal and institutional racism in the school. He has been with the school since, I believe, 1998 as the only African-American faculty member in the bioengineering department. In 2004, a committee decided that he would not be awarded tenure and would not progress from an assistant professor to a full tenured professor. He leveled claims of racism at the committee (btw, pretty much the entire senior faculty of bioengineering - I believe 20 or so people - voted in his tenure decision), and filed grievance which has been reviewed again and again for the past two years. Now he claims that the grievance process was obstructed by the powers that be and is on a hunger strike, demanding the loss of a man's job, and demanding to be awarded tenure. I've read the story in a few papers now, you can read more detail if you google mit prof hunger strike, and I would love to stand up against racism in the school. However, I haven't seen really any strong evidence that racism was actually involved, and I'd prefer to think the school is innocent until proven guilty (also, the tenure process at mit is pretty tough, less than half of junior faculty actual become senior faculty, so it's very possible that he was denied tenure for purely academic reasons.) What do you think? I think that if there was strong evidence of racism, it would have been found in the multiple reviews of his case that have been pursued in the past 2 years. And even if racism was involved, I'm not sure this prof should be instantly awarded tenure, but should be able to have his case reviewed by a new set of peers (i.e. if conflicts of interest arise in a criminal trial, the defendant is not instantly innocent, but retried in a new court). I think it's interesting, and I'd like to hear some feedback from people.