I withheld an opinion until I saw the recording of the zoom recording. There have been cases where people are being wise-asses (like using the word "nigardly" in front of a black audience, when the word doesn't appear in modern conversational English.)
After watching the zoom recording, seeing and hearing the context he used it, and the pronunciation (both vowels are different from the slur, and it's missing the final "r" sound) I don't think the professor did anything wrong, either intentionally or unintentionally. It's a shame the school administrators don't have enough of a backbone to stand up for the professor.
- Patton was temporarily removed from a single class, not fired.
- MBA students pay an outrageous price. They're customers. Customers are often irrational and wrong, but we all do what they want us to do anyway.
- There's no ideological component to this. The prof is not being suspended for having an unorthodox opinion. He's being suspended for using a poorly-chosen example, being asked by students to stop, and then using it again.
From another source:
> The students said some of them had voiced their concern to Patton during his lecture, but that he’d used the word in following class sections anyway. They also said they’d reached out to fellow Chinese students, who “confirmed that the pronunciation of this word is much different than what Professor Patton described in class. The word is most commonly used with a pause in between both syllables.”[1]
- I've heard otherwise from native Chinese speakers. Pronunciation varies widely from north to south.
- MBA programs need to meet certain standards for the accreditation. It's not simply what the customers want.
- I think its disingenuous to think there's no ideological component to this. The memories of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were invoked. (Both cases were, IMO, an outrageous abuse of police force.)
> I've heard otherwise from native Chinese speakers. Pronunciation varies widely from north to south.
This may be true. I have no idea. But perhaps this was the wrong quote for me to fixate on.
The point the students made (and I agree with) is that there are tens of thousands of Chinese words that don't sound like racial slurs. After being informed that he sounded like he was using a racial slur, he could have chosen any other. He did not.
The lesson itself is also of dubious value. If you removed that part of his lecture, I don't think anyone would be worse off. It's not like lectures are what MBAs are really paying for, anyway.
> MBA programs need to meet certain standards for the accreditation. It's not simply what the customers want.
That's true for curriculum content, but the contentious part of his lecture had nothing to do with anything academic. It could not have any effect on accreditation.
> I think its disingenuous to think there's no ideological component to this.
I was saying that the professor was not being ideological. He was just being an idiot. I believe professors should not be punished for ideology, but they should be punished for stubbornly sticking to a pointless "lesson" that sounded like a racial slur.
I agree that the students clearly were being ideological.
After watching the zoom recording, seeing and hearing the context he used it, and the pronunciation (both vowels are different from the slur, and it's missing the final "r" sound) I don't think the professor did anything wrong, either intentionally or unintentionally. It's a shame the school administrators don't have enough of a backbone to stand up for the professor.