Why I Am Suing UCLA – by Gordon Klein – Common Sense with Bari Weiss
Shocked by the student s email, which struck me as deeply patronizing and offensive to the same black students he claimed to care so much about, I collected my thoughts and, 20 minutes later, emailed back: 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? Also, do you have any idea if any students are from Minneapolis? I assume that they are probably especially devastated as well. I am thinking that a white student from there might possibly be even more devastated by this, especially because some might think that they re racist even if they are not.
I wrapped up my reply by citing Martin Luther King s vision of a colorblind world where people are judged solely by the content of their character making it clear that I had no intention of treating any students differently on the basis of their skin color.
I thought this would do it and we d move on with the class final and, just as important, summer break. I was naive.
By that evening, students were calling for my job. Soon after, they circulated a petition demanding I be fired; within a day or two, nearly 20,000 had signed without knowing anything about me or taking into account, as far as I could tell, the implications of non-color-blind grading. I was attacked for being a white man and woefully racist. On June 5, three days after I was first emailed, I was suspended amid a growing online campaign directed at me.