The University of California, Los Angeles placed a lecturer on leave after denying a student’s request to postpone an exam amid protests over George Floyd’s death.
Accounting lecturer Gordon Klein’s “classes have been reassigned to other faculty” as the school investigates the situation, according to NBC News.
A student requested that Klein postpone an exam while protests spread across the country after Floyd, an unarmed black man, died after now-former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes during an arrest.
“Thanks for your suggestion in your email below that I give black students special treatment, given the tragedy in Minnesota,” Klein answered the request in an email. “Do you know the names of the classmates that are black? How can I identify them since we’ve been having online classes only? Are there any students that may be of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half?”
“Remember that MLK famously said that people should not be evaluated based on the ‘color of their skin,'” the email continued. “Do you think that your request would run afoul of MLK’s admonition?”
A Change.org petition has garnered more than 20,000 signatures pushing for his firing, arguing that his response was, “extremely insensitive, dismissive, and woefully racist response to his students’ request for empathy and compassion during a time of civil unrest.”
Klein said the student who requested the postponement was not black.
“In 39 years of teaching, there are hundreds of students who can attest that I have given them compassion, encouragement and support,” he said.
The news comes as UCLA is reportedly investigating another professor for reading Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which contains the N-word, to students.
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.
“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,” an email sent to students read. “We share students’ concerns that the lecturer did not simply pause and reassess their teaching pedagogy to meet the students’ needs.”
