I saw the video and here is my guess.
Great job reading my post
Uh, yeah, it was pretty great. You saw the video, but didn’t go back to see what the context of the video was–did not, for example, read the complaint of the students, which demonstrates that your guess was completely wrong. Then you accused the students of not going back to see what the context was–which they had, and you hadn’t.
This is already being spread by media as a professor being “dismiss[ed]”.
Linking to screen shot of Google results – I saw this last night and it’s still that way last I checked, just before this post.
Clicking the link takes you to a story with a headline saying: “Alum, Peers Question Whether USC Professor Deserves Pressure Over Chinese Word That Sounds Like Racial Slur.” So it refers to dismissal, then backs off to say that “he voluntarily stepped away from his position” in the body.
There are also multiple YouTube search results using the word dismissed or dismissal.
So, it’s clear he was not fired, and it is, at best, unclear whether he has even been “suspended” at this point.
I think it’s really important to try to slow the outrage roll here. I don’t think he deserved suspension, but I am not convinced that he has been suspended. So it might be helpful to be clear about what the outrage is for here.
Some commentary on that issue here.
Matthew Simmons, a spokesperson for the business school, declined to answer additional questions about the case but said that Patton wasn’t “suspended from teaching. He is taking a pause while another professor teaches that one course, but he continues to teach his others.”
Even if Marshall doesn’t consider it a suspension, the American Association of University Professors maintains that removing a professor from the classroom prior to a hearing before a faculty body is a severe punishment that should be reserved for serious safety threats.
“Removal from even a single class can, of course, pose serious complications for the faculty member’s standing as a teacher,” says an AAUP report on the “use and abuse” of faculty suspensions. “Suspension usually implies an extremely negative judgment, for which the basis remains untested in the absence of a hearing, even though an administration may claim that it is saving the faculty member embarrassment. That potential embarrassment must be risked (or at least the faculty member should be permitted to risk it) if the individual is to have a chance of clearing his or her name.”
But it is possible if it’s being described in some places as voluntary that he wasn’t “removed.” We don’t have enough information to know if he volunteered, or “volunteered.”
We have an official statement from the Dean that - well, it doesn’t exactly throw him completely under the bus, but it basically accepts everything the students said uncritically.
That does not tell us what, if any, disciplinary action was taken against him.
I can think of many reasons why he might have voluntarily handed over teaching that class for the rest of the term, can’t you?
Sure, we don’t know exactly what has happened. But I suspect that your desire to insist that there’s nothing to see here would be rather different if you were the subject of a groundless student-led witchhunt and your boss showed no indication that he would support you.
As someone who’s lived in Asia, and heard and used the ne-ga word very frequently in speech, it never remotely occurred to me that it would be offensive.
However I’m getting rid of my bird feeder because I’m concerned about being branded as a racist if someone hears me asking for black nyjer seed at the store. .
I haven’t said that there’s nothing to see here. I’ve said that there needs to be some concern for the truth. You are free to disagree with that, obviously.
You might want to consider whether you are being manipulated.
Agreed. These type of actions are the problem.
I’m far less concerned about an instance of a few students doing something silly than about the fact that by the evidence of this thread, a significant proportion of those on the left think there is nothing to be concerned about here. We might dislike who promoted the story, but there seems unbelievable reluctance to acknowledge that this really is an example of “political correctness gone mad”, and that this is the kind of nonsense that the social justice movement should distance itself from.
As the USC alumni noted in the letter of support they wrote - something they would be acutely aware of, since many of them are Chinese academics - this is exactly the kind of toxic dynamic that arose in the Cultural Revolution. Students get carried away with ideological fervor, start picking on teachers to denounce for ideological impurity. The grown-ups are faced with a prisoner’s dilemma: they could try to stand together for common sense and resist the students’ hyperbolic accusations, but the safer choice is to defect and go along with the students in denouncing their colleague, rather than risk being the next target.
REPORTED! 
Thank you for your conern.
Below are three relevant statements/emails/announcements from 1) the Faculty Council at USC Business School 2) the Dean 3) the Provost:
Dear Colleagues:
Last week some full-time MBA students complained about an example that Prof. Greg Patton used in several sections of his GSBA 542 Communication for Management course, a core class in the full-time MBA program. In his class on Thursday August 20th, Greg was discussing presentation skills. He was providing examples from different cultures on verbal disfluency. In this context, he used a frequently used filler word in Chinese language. Some students thought this Chinese word sounded like a vile racial slur in the English language.
After the final section of the class, Greg received feedback from several students that they were uncomfortable with his example. The students lodged a formal complaint with Marshall. They stated that Greg had malicious intent with this example.
The next day, Greg sent a written apology to all three cores. He also appeared before all students and verbally expressed remorse for the pain he had unintentionally caused.
Marshall administrators worked on creating alternative classes/learning avenues for students who preferred not to continue in Greg’s class.
From Friday August 21st to Sunday August 23, there were a number of meetings involving Marshall administrators, a small group of full-time MBA students, and full-time MBA staff. After an internal review process by the dean’s office that included an extensive review of Greg’s teaching, the dean informed Greg on August 23 that he would continue to teach the class. Greg taught the class on Monday August 24. That day, the dean reversed the original decision to keep Greg in the class. He was replaced by a colleague from his department, starting on Tuesday August 25. In the early evening on August 24, the Dean sent a letter to the full-time MBA students announcing this change.
A formal USC OED [Office of Equity and Diversity] investigation is currently in place.
The faculty council has met with Greg as well as Dean Garrett and Vice Dean Yang to learn more. We have also reviewed a recording of Greg using the example in class.
Attached you will find several documents [not included in the message that I received -EV], including the following:
- The students’ complaint message to Marshall administrators
- Dean Garrett’s letter to the students
- Greg’s letter to the Marshall Graduate Student Association board.
Some people have already posted the video on public sites. You can find them with online searches.
In light of this event, we seek your input about (1) how to find constructive solutions for challenging situations facing faculty and administrators, (2) how should we, as faculty members respond in such situations and (3) how should these complaints be handled by Marshall administration. Each of us is available to meet and provide any additional information that we are aware of. Please complete this survey by Wednesday, September 2. Your responses will be anonymous:
Best,
Faculty Council
September 6, 2020
Dear Marshall alumni and friends,
I wanted to take a moment to clarify my message to students at the Marshall School. It was absolutely not my intention to cast any aspersions on specific Mandarin words or on Mandarin generally.
The student complaints we received had nothing to do with the Mandarin language but focused on the use of a polarizing example Professor Patton used when trying to make a reasonable and important point about communication. In his apology to students, he noted he could have chosen a better example to illustrate his point. With Professor Patton’s agreement, he did not finish his accelerated course for our MBA students that ended last week. We are now following standard university procedures to explore the complaints students have raised.
Since I began my tenure at USC Marshall just two months ago, I have been an enthusiastic supporter of the school’s ongoing and future globalization efforts. USC Marshall is blessed with students, faculty and staff from many countries and cultures. I want nothing more than to build relationships with all members of the Trojan family, including and especially the extensive network in Asia.
One of the reasons I am so thrilled to be dean is that the Marshall community is committed to developing and strengthening a learning environment that values greater cultural understanding, one in which all members feel seen, heard, and valued. We respect and honor unconditionally all languages and cultures of our students, faculty and staff and believe each has an important place in our community.
September 8, 2020
Thank you for your email. I am responding on behalf of President Folt and Dean Garrett.
We appreciate your concerns and take them seriously. In this particular case at the Marshall School, the course was scheduled to run for three weeks and, after student complaints were lodged, the professor volunteered to step away for the final two weeks. He was not dismissed nor suspended nor was his status changed. We are required to investigate all complaints and have a thorough process for doing so which we began immediately.
The complaints occurred in a course in communication across cultural lines. Its purpose is to prepare students to be successful in business around the world. There is no intent to impose U.S. cultural norms on communications in other languages and cultures. Indeed, this situation arose when students questioned the polarizing example chosen to illustrate a reasonable and important point about communication and had nothing to do with the Mandarin language itself. As the professor said in his apology, the example used in this lecture could have been better chosen.
USC is a multicultural institution dedicated to providing the very best education that prepares our graduates for success in their chosen careers across the globe. We are committed to meeting this mission for our more than 45,000 students through robust debate of ideas across 8,000 classes every term. Occasionally, anomalies like this occur and we can assure you that our internal procedures are fair and appropriate. Thank you once again for your message of concern.
No, this proves political correctness is a problem.
So, based on the letters posted up-thread, is it correct to say that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING punitive happened to the professor? He wasn’t cancelled, suspended, dismissed, docked pay, harmed in any possible way?
That, gasp, maybe the system for reporting and considering potentially controversial statements within a classroom setting worked?
Interesting perspective, but I couldn’t disagree with you more.
As someone who is currently a professor, as I read it it’s pretty clear to me that he was suspended. The “docked pay” part is not clear however.
This is the key sentence in letter 1, from before the shit hit the public fan:
That day, the dean reversed the original decision to keep Greg in the class. He was replaced by a colleague from his department,
After this blows up in their face they say:
“We’d like you to volunteer to step away for the final two weeks…”
The decision was clearly the Dean’s, not Greg’s. The wording is very precise. I suspect Greg was told to go along with it, was told to apologize to the student or he would have been more severely censured.
From my academic experience, it was a case of “here is your punishment, agree to accept it or we’re firing you”.
I will defer to your experience in this area.
My point is that you would think, based on the tenor of these posts, that the students had gotten him fired over this. Or that the Dean had made an example of him by crucifying him on the alter of political correctness.
Instead, they did a review, replaced him for 2 weeks (only in this one course - articles above say he is still teaching other courses), and it will all go away. Maybe he will pick a different example, or better frame the example he used. Maybe the students even learned something!
I guess whenever these things get blown up so big I wonder who is gaining from all the sound and fury? And why do we always go along with it? Who is trying so damn hard to make us all suspicious and resentful of each other?
“dropped from one class” is not the same as “suspended” to me, where the implication is clearly “suspended from all teaching duties”. It’s clear from the Uni’s response that he has other classes and other teaching duties.