Syracuse U. Prof Placed on Leave for Using Term ‘Wuhan Flu’ on Syllabus
“We will not allow any member of our community to violate the University’s commitment to a safe, inclusive and welcoming learning and living environment.”
There are certain things you’re just not allowed to say in higher education.
Campus Reform reports:
Syracuse puts prof who used ‘Wuhan flu’ in syllabus on leave
Syracuse University has placed a professor on administrative leave after he referred to COVID 19 as “the Wuhan Flu” and the “Chinese Communist Party Virus” in his course syllabus. A complaint against the professor is now being investigated under the university’s Office of Equal Opportunity, Inclusion, and Resolution Services.
The announcement came on the same day that student-run social media accounts posted screenshots of a course syllabus that was reportedly distributed to students by Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Jon Zubieta. According to those accounts, Zubieta distributed the syllabi to students in his course titled, “Inorganic Chemistry.” In the syllabus, Zubieta included a section titled “Special Notices Related to the COVID19 Pandemic” where he also referred to the virus as the “Wuhan Flu” and “Chinese Communist Party Virus.”
In an email to students and an official announcement posted to the university’s website on Tuesday, the university condemned the professor’s “derogatory language” as “damaging” to the student learning environment and “offensive to Chinese, international and Asian-Americans everywhere who have experienced hate speech, rhetoric and actions since the pandemic began.”
The university said that it has “removed” the professor from the classroom and placed him on administrative leave“pending the outcome of a full investigation.”
The university asserted its commitment to being an “anti-racist” community, promising to take “swift action to confront bias and hate.”
“We will not allow any member of our community to violate the University’s commitment to a safe, inclusive and welcoming learning and living environment. Professors are expected to be especially mindful of these goals, as they are the individuals entrusted to cultivate productive, professional and supportive classrooms for our students.”
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Comments
This is why we must never give in to the pressure to use that fraudulent name “Covid 19”. Doing so is the same as referring to rioters as “protesters”, or to Nazis as “German nationalists”.
Also, “covid” in Hebrew means “honor”, and I refuse to give the disease any honor.
“We will not allow any member of our community … ”
To say the words the woke have deemed unacceptable, this week.
He’ll likely sue. He’ll almost certainly win – eventually. The school will act like Oberlin, claiming they were right anyway and attacking him as a racist. Everyone else will get the message that they had better toe the line.
The only way to reduce this kind of thing is to give it teeth. If a school is found to have restricted someone’s civil rights, put the offending authorities on trial with potential jail time. Pull the school’s accreditation.
Do something other than let them use the legal process to publicize and draw out the victim’s punishment!
If he sues he mostly likely won’t win, unless he has a contract that they’ve broken. It’s a private institution so it’s not bound by the first amendment.
But even at a government college I don’t think the administrators responsible would have committed an actual crime. They wouldn’t have deprived him of any civil right, they’d just have wrongfully deprived him of a benefit; that would give him a right to damages, and/or an injunction against the university not to do it again, but the worst that could happen to the individual administrators who made the decision would be that they might be fired (and would be if not for the fact that the whole administration is corrupt).
What do these ‘Muppets’ think we should call it? It was developed in a Military Laboratory in WUHAN CHINA as a potential bio-weapon and now I’m reading this morning that the COMMUNIST WHO doing their fake investigation into the virus NEVER EVEN WENT TO WUHAN! POTUS was right in dumping the WHO and refusing to hand over the $450 million pa while the CHICOMMS tip in only $38mil pa and get to control the game! He has dumped the rubbish PARIS AGREEMENT much to the disgust of the FAKE GLOBAL WARMING $ MILKERS (like Mr. Gore) and is looking seriously at dumping the UN altogether. Smart move from the smartest world leader!
Yes, Professor Zubieta should sue. I hope he wins a generous amount. I also hope that he is recruited and goes to another, less ideological university. Syracuse will be that much poorer for his loss.
Imagine the chaos this will cause for all the students in the courses he was teaching. I wonder how the university will cover for his absence…have another professor take over the classes? Cancel his classes and give the students the option of transferring to other classes (good luck with that)?
I’d love to see the entire university shut itself down for the semester to show how sorry it is about the alleged racist behavior by Professor Zubieta…but not issue any refunds to students. That will show everyone how severe the university takes this transgression!
The term “Wuhan flu” makes perfect sense, and is what this virus would be called if the Chinese hadn’t forced the WHO to change the naming protocol because they wanted to blame it on the US. Here are some other examples of diseases named after where they were thought to originate:
Japanese Encephalitis
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome
Ebola (river in Congo)
Nipah virus (river/village in Malaysia)
Marburg disease (city in Germany)
Zika fever (forest in Uganda)
West Nile virus
Guinea worm
Lyme disease (town of Lyme, CT)
Spanish flu
German measles
Hong Kong flu
This reminds me of a paper I read long ago on the history of syphilis. It noted that in the 15-16th centuries, pretty much every nation in Europe referred to it as “the French Disease”… except for France, where it was referred to as “the Italian Disease.”
(Here’s a more contemporary retelling.)
Someone needs to find the Chinese “political officer” who’s behind all this nonsense, and ship his butt to Gitmo.