The University of California, Los Angeles has reportedly launched an investigation into a white professor who read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which contains the N-word, to students.
The Washington Free Beacon obtained a political science department email last week in which Michael Chwe, UCLA political science chairman, and two other department heads denounced lecturer W. Ajax Peris, who is white, for saying the N-word aloud during a lecture. UCLA will also host a town hall for students this week to discuss the controversy and “outline future next steps” and urged students to come forward with complaints.
“The lecturer also showed a portion of a documentary which included graphic images and descriptions of lynching, with a narrator who quoted the n-word in explaining the history of lynching. Many students expressed distress and anger regarding the lecture and the lecturer’s response to their concerns during the lecture,” the email read. “We share students’ concerns that the lecturer did not simply pause and reassess their teaching pedagogy to meet the students’ needs.”
A student also posted a recording of Peris, an Air Force veteran, reading the civil rights letter on Twitter.
@UCLA After numerous students plead with Professor Ajax Peris to not use the n word he refused to omit the word because as he stated “just that my skin is white does not prevent me from being able to say those words” and apologized for our “discomfort” but not for his words pic.twitter.com/3WVyKuA8Dg
— ♛ (@heavynne_) June 3, 2020
Peris issued an apology for the reading, but others have still called for him to be fired, which the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education opposes.
“Peris’s academic freedom, as a faculty member at a public institution bound by the First Amendment, includes the right to decide whether and how to confront or discuss difficult or offensive material, including historical readings that document our nation’s centuries-long history of racism,” FIRE spokeswoman Katlyn Patton said. “Doing so does not amount to unlawful discrimination or harassment, and the law is abundantly clear that UCLA could not investigate or punish a professor for exercising his expressive or academic freedom.”
UCLA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
