So when I said in the next paragraph that he was “really murdered by police” how exactly did you interpret that as dismissing the circumstances or moral culpability of the event?
Because you seem to be treating the murder of a black American man by American police as a mere random tragic incident that it’s “ridiculous” to imagine could be genuinely traumatic for another black American man 2000 miles away who didn’t know the murdered man personally.
That, I think, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of why so many people were so upset about Floyd’s murder.
Maybe so, but the issue was clear to me, Sam Stone claimed that the teacher was reprimanded “for refusing to adjust the grades for black students as the administration was demanding.”
The administration did not demand that, what I read is that the administration did not recommend the changes, and the students made only a request about having shorter or less important to the final grade tests due to the unrest and protests, they still could fail if there was no effort there.
Seems that the reason for the suspension of the teacher was the tactless letter that while one can agree or disagree that it was that, the suspension was not really related to adjusting already gained grades or the administration demanding that.
That’s right. It does happen all the time. And kids get killed by the government in Syria every day, and Ethiopians starve to death, and sexual abuse and child labor and slavery and any other thing that would be horribly traumatic to actually experience go on all the time. We learn to tune it out not necessarily to be uncaring, cynical people but because doing anything to solve these problems requires an ability to maintain rational thought and plan and act accordingly instead of breaking down emotionally at the existence of every injustice in the world. I think teaching that skill to people well before they reach college age is valuable, but more relevantly, I think all the students at UCLA do in fact possess this skill, and pretending they don’t only at such times as it could benefit their exam grade, and not at any other time of the academic or social calendar, is deeply disingenuous and disrespectful.
Oh well, another “Susanita” argument.
[Changed from a post I made before about the pitiful way the Trump admin responded to the Corona Virus:]
A long time ago I pointed to that kind of argument that looks at the worst in others to minimize the gross and bad things happening in the USA as a “Susanita argument”
One very famous Latin American cartoonist, Quino (RIP this year 
), had a comic strip called Mafalda. Where Susanita (a very rich and conservative girl) told Mafalda that she always looked at news and reports about what the very bad people were doing to others in other places in the world. So she felt glad and good living in Argentina (While the dirty war was going on, but that was another history).
The point Mafalda made (actually what the great cartoonist Quino say) was:
“That is not good Susanita, you have to compare to others that are better than you, not with the ones that are worse so one can become a better person”
(I’m paraphrasing there), and then Susanita said to Mafalda:
“C’mon! who would do such a dirty move to oneself!”
And the moral of the strip was very clear, Susanita was the one with the dumb point, it is not good to look at the worst nations and come with your country’s shortcomings as mostly inconsequential by that comparison. We should be looking at what are the best efforts of other nations or to consider ideas like ending the war on drugs that would solve or minimize a lot of violence or incarcerations in the US; of course, many conservatives think that looking at better efforts or solutions is nasty or bad reporting.
More armchair psychologizing on your part. Speaking as a faculty member (although not at UCLA), it is not our business to intrusively second-guess our students’ underlying motives or psychological state or degree of wholeheartedness when they submit a request for special treatment. Even when their request is unpersuasive or unreasonable.
AFAICT, the manner and form of the request made by Prof. Klein’s student for a grading-policy change specifically for black students was appropriately respectful and coherent. Consequently, the student was entitled to a respectful response declining the request and upholding the university’s policies.
Using your armchair psychologizing of the student’s presumed state of mind to justify the professor’s assholish snarking at the student as a merited disciplinary act is not a convincing excuse. You as a sixth-hand (or thereabouts) spectator of the situation may choose to believe that the student had nefarious and unprincipled psychological motives in making the request, but speculating on the nature of a student’s psychological motives for making a policy-related request is not within a faculty member’s remit.
If we as faculty members have genuine cause to believe that a student is actually dangerously unbalanced or suffering from serious mental problems, we have standard procedures to follow to address that concern. But speculative amateur diagnoses that a student who makes an unpersuasive request for a course policy change is merely “pretending” to be “breaking down emotionally” in order to “benefit their exam grade”, and thus “deeply disingenuous and disrespectful”, have no place in faculty responsibilities.
College professors are not some kind of Mean Nuns in a stand-up comic’s account of a convent school. We don’t go around ferociously interrogating students about the state of their souls and lambasting them for disgraceful sinfulness if they do anything we don’t like.
If students actually violate our rules about academic integrity or appropriate conduct, we take the appropriate disciplinary action against them. But we don’t make up speculative reconstructions about what bad things may be going on in their minds in order to justify pre-emptively scolding them and putting them down in deliberately assholish and sneering ways. If we do, we can reasonably expect to be disciplined ourselves.
You definitely have to be in some sort of academic ivory tower to think that there’s a correct and reasonable way to create different grading standards based on race or based on who can emote more convincingly in an e-mail. The entire situation is absurd and there’s no circling back to reasonableness here - it’s like trying to figure out which astrologers to accuse of using fake crystal balls by designing a chemical test for crystal.
Who in this situation do you imagine is advocating in any way for creating “different grading standards based on race or based on who can emote more convincingly in an e-mail”?
The entire academic community at UCLA and elsewhere seems to be in unanimous agreement that Professor Klein should NOT be expected, or allowed, to accede to a request for different grading standards based on race or “e-mail emoting”.
Nobody in academia, AFAICT, is arguing that Prof. Klein should have granted the student’s request for different grading policies in this case. His suspension was due to the assholish snarkiness of his response to the student, not to his refusal to grant the student’s request.
Surely we are all on the same page at least as regards that fundamental fact? Because if you still haven’t managed to grasp it, we’re in for a very long and tiring conversation here.
There is no “appropriate” way to make such a ludicrous (not to mention illegal) request, and I maintain that the person who did so got a mere fraction of what he or she deserved.
Nonsense. Students (and others) make unpersuasive and unreasonable (not to mention illegal) policy change requests all the time, and the manner and form of such requests may be appropriate or inappropriate.
For example, “Professor, it’s such a beautiful day out, can’t we please have a homework study session outdoors instead of the exam today?” is an unreasonable request made in an appropriate manner.
“Hey fuckface! You want to cancel the exam today, or you want us to beat the crap out of you?” is an unreasonable request made in an inappropriate (not to mention illegal) manner.
I repeat: Professors aren’t Mean Nuns in a convent-school anecdote, and it is not part of our job to decide what our students “deserve” for what we imagine they’re thinking inside their heads when they ask us something politely.
Professors are adults dealing with other adults. If an adult makes a stupid, inherently offensive request of another adult then he shouldn’t expect to be treated with kid gloves.
So Sam, rather than admitting error, has abandoned the thread; and Walter and Zoster are reduced to arguing that common decency is for chumps and that treating people with basic respect and courtesy means treating them with kid gloves and that being traumatized by massive institutionalized racist violence is a sign of mental weakness.
Modern conservatism, y’all.
I don’t believe for a moment that this student’s request was sincere. I think it was a grift, a transparent attempt to hijack a tragedy for selfish purposes. Moreover, given its egregiousness, I don’t think the Professor’s email was inappropriate. In the world of work, the student would’ve been lucky to receive such a measured response.
Good for you! I don’t especially care what you believe for a moment.
The drift is from the idea that a professor was “reprimanded for refusing to adjust the grades for black students as the administration was demanding,” to this idea that because the student was, according to your Kreskinifying, insincere, it’s okay for the professor to respond unprofessionally.
There’s a defensible argument that the first amendment protects a public university professor’s right to be an asshole to their students. But there’s no defensible argument that the professor was “reprimanded for refusing to adjust the grades for black students as the administration was demanding.”
Your defense of the professor’s assholish behavior by blaming the student for your belief in his insincerity is a pretty decent encapsulation of modern conservatism, and I hope you’ll continue exemplifying it.
I’m not responsible for any drift in the conversation. I never claimed the professor was suspended for refusing to grade black students differently. I simply said the professor’s response was reasonable, given the (frankly offensive) nature of the request. Of course, the reason I think the request was offensive is because I strongly suspect it was made in bad faith. If you feel differently, you likely wouldn’t view the Professor’s response in the same light I do.
Moreover, the student in question is studying law, presumably in order to pursue a career as a lawyer. Part of my job involves dealing with law firms, and all my experience to date leads me to believe that If the student pulled something like this in an actual law office he likely would’ve received a considerably harsher response. That’s why I believe that to treat this request like any other would be to handle the student with kid gloves.
Who else would I blame? I can hardly blame the professor for his student’s decision to (as I see it) leverage a national tragedy for his own purposes.
Professors have or should have a duty to treat the requests of their students as sincere, barring 100% proof of insincerity. That alone is enough reason to sanction him.
Those four words sure seem to begin a lot of conservative sentences these days, don’t they?
This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the teacher-student dynamic. If a behavior is inappropriate in the environment for which you’re preparing a student, the job of the teacher is to explain why it’s inappropriate, not to mock the student. If the student already knew everything about the environment for which you prepared them, your job as a teacher would be unnecessary.
That said, it’s also just barely possible that the student, unlike you, is recognizing a difference between a classroom and a law firm, and behaves differently in different environments accordingly.
And this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how trauma works. It’s not really debatable that news stories of awful violence that appears directed against a group in which an individual belongs can create traumatic responses–see research on 9/11, for example.
Again I question whether someone who really can’t handle hearing about a news story without falling apart is fit to practice law. That’s why it matters a lot whether the e-mailer was being honest or not.
Imagine the average case for a non-celebrity defense attorney. You have to deal with police abuse all day long. From “I stopped him because he was driving erratically, no it has nothing to do with it being the 30th of the month, we do not have ticket quotas” to “I searched the car because I smelled the odor of marijuana” to “I am not aware of anyone in the history of my department mistreating a suspect based on race.” Encountering shitty treatment, especially of black people, by police and a culture of lying, and still being able to pick your battles, maintain your composure, and do your best for your client is going to be the day in and day out – and unlike the George Floyd case that has nothing to do this particular student, you are responsible for getting justice for a client! The actual, legitimate pressure is immense. If you are too much of a delicate flower to watch CNN without shattering then I hope your plan for after law school is to hide in some basement office proofing contracts for the rest of your life, because you ain’t cut out for the real responsibilities of the courtroom.
I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this point. I think professors should interpret their students’ requests charitably, but I also believe the principle of charity should only extend so far. The professor clearly felt the student’s request was so unreasonable that it didn’t deserve the presumption of good intentions. I can’t say I fault him for that.
For what it’s worth, I’d feel the same if a conservative student made a similarly absurd request. I’d be equally unsympathetic if a conservative student asked for an exam to be changed because he was traumatized by Trump’s defeat in the General Election, and by the Democrats’ brazen electoral fraud (not that I believe there was any such fraud, of course). And I wouldn’t judge the professor if he chose to respond in a manner that was less than perfectly professional.