University Lecturer Reportedly Under Investigation After Reading MLK Letter Aloud
History cannot be changed, but it appears that leftist liberals in education want to keep parts of it hidden from people.
A lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles has been condemned and is under investigation for reading aloud a letter written by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because the part he read contained a racial slur, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The outlet reported it obtained a department-wide email in which the university’s political science chair, Michael Chwe, in addition to two other department leaders, denounced postdoctoral lecturer W. Ajax Peris and said he had been referred to UCLA’s Discrimination Prevention Office
Peris, who is a veteran of the United States Air Force and is white, read aloud to his class from King’s monumental “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and is now in hot water.
King wrote the letter from jail to his fellow clergymen after he was arrested for protesting Jim Crow laws in 1963.
Officials at UCLA are reportedly upset because while Peris was reading the letter, a significant piece of civil rights movement history, he did not censor himself when he came to the part that includes the n-word. King, of course, was not using the n-word in a derogatory way, but was rather explaining how the racists of the time mistreated African-Americans, including by calling them slurs.
According to the Free Beacon, Peris cited the historical document to go along with his lecture about the history of racism in America.
WARNING: The video below contains the use of a racial slur that some viewers may find offensive.
@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
Students complained, and the email was reportedly sent out to the entire political science department.
“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.
The letter was signed by Chwe, as well as the department’s vice chair for graduate studies, Lorrie Frasure, and undergraduate studies, Chris Tausanovitch.
“We share students’ concerns that the lecturer did not simply pause and reassess their teaching pedagogy to meet the students’ needs,” they wrote.
Moreover, according to the UCLA College of Letters and Science, the video of Peris reading the part of the letter that includes the n-word “has been shared with UCLA’s Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for review.”
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. This information has been shared with UCLA’s Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for review.
— UCLA College (@UCLACollege) June 3, 2020
Although Peris apologized, there have still been calls from students for the university fire him and Gordon Klein, an accounting professor who reportedly did not cancel or delay final exams for minority students in the wake of George Floyd’s death, according to Kristie-Valerie Hoang, digital managing editor for UCLA’s student-run newspaper, the Daily Bruin.
The protestors called for Professor Gordon Klein and Ajax Peris’s firing.
“These demands don’t stop here.”
— Kristie-Valerie Hoang (@kristie_valerie) June 4, 2020
The outlet reported a town hall meeting is scheduled for Tuesday to discuss the incident involving Peris and what steps might come next.
But the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a pro-free speech group, said firing the lecturer could violate his First Amendment rights.
“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 told the Free Beacon.
“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.”
All Peris did was quote the words written by MLK, a civil rights icon.
Did school officials condemn the author of the letter? No. Instead, they judged a person who read it aloud.
Of course, neither one should be denounced. But the left has twisted education in our country. They want people to know only portions of what happened to mold this nation.
Colleges and universities ought to be focused on pursuing objective truth. But with these institutions now dominated by liberals, truth and accuracy have taken a backseat.
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