Winthrop University Censors Dean for Using Term ‘Wuhan Virus’

Winthrop University Censors Dean for Using Term ‘Wuhan Virus’

In doing this, isn’t Winthrop University essentially siding with the Chinese Communist Party? Wouldn’t they do the same thing?

The College Fix reports:

Winthrop University censors dean who used term ‘Wuhan virus’

In mid-May, an opinion column discussing the origins of the COVID-19 virus written by a Winthrop University dean was retracted by a well-known library science journal. Days later, the school scrubbed any mention of the column from its official university archive, with a provost calling it “ethnically offensive.”

The column, titled “The Wuhan Wilding,” was written by Winthrop Dean of Library Services Mark Herring and included references to the “Wuhan virus,” as well as a personal story of his daughter once at an upscale restaurant in China that served dogs. Herring writes that a friend jokingly referred to COVID-19 as the “Kung Flu.”

The article appeared in the April 2020 edition of Against the Grain, a journal meant primarily for librarians…

“It’s all well and good to call it COVID-19,” Herring told The Fix, “but in five years nobody’s going to remember that it came from China, and I thought it’s important that we remember that, at least, had things been different, we might not have had to go through a full lockdown.”

But on May 12, Against the Grain retracted the article and apologized for its publication without giving a specific reason for the retraction. The column was removed from the website and the print copy of the journal posted to the site had the offending page removed, while still promoting the column on its front page…

As for his campus colleagues, Winthrop Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Adrienne McCormick sent an e-mail to the entire campus condemning Herring’s column.

While reinforcing the school’s commitment “to academic freedom and inclusive excellence,” McCormick wrote that Herring’s column “included comments that may be viewed as ethnically offensive relating to the COVID-19 virus.”

“These remarks do not reflect the spirit of Winthrop’s mission and do not represent the views of Winthrop University,” she wrote.

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