Statements from USC Dean and Provost About the Greg Patton / Neige Controversy Reason.com

Instead, USC concluded that this incident should lead to an utterly extraordinary remedy (whether or not truly voluntary on the professor’s part): replacing the professor a third of the way through the course. That’s not just a message that the professor gave an example that “could have been better chosen” (even if one agrees that a different example should have been chosen). Normally, in such a situation of simply an ill-chosen example, the professor would simply say “Sorry, I could have chosen a better example.”

Rather, the message is that the professor did something very wrong indeed that English-speaking listeners should rightly treat ordinary use of “neige” when talking about Chinese as a grave offense, rather than catching themselves and saying to themselves “Oh, wait, this is Chinese, of course this is just an accidental homonym.” And implicit in that is the message that Chinese speakers should watch what they say, not just in examples but in ordinary conversation that could be overheard, or risk being pushed into similarly extraordinary (even if supposedly “voluntar[y]”) remedies for acting in an “[ill-]chosen” or “polarizing” way.

via reason.com

Craziness.