Coastal Carolina U. Prof Faces Termination After Brushing Off False Racist Accusations From Student Activists
“The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education calls on Coastal Carolina to reinstate Dr. Steven Earnest, who was suspended from teaching after criticizing student protestors who staged a walkout because they saw the names of students of color written on a whiteboard and mistook the list as malicious. In fact, it turned out to have been a list of students who might want to hang out together.”
A professor of theater at Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina is facing the possibility of termination over nothing more than students who became offended over nothing. This type of situation is becoming more typical.
The names of some students of color were written on a whiteboard for a perfectly innocent reason, but it was misinterpreted by other students looking for a reason to be outraged.
Robby Soave of Reason has a concise summary of what happened:
Coastal Caroline University (CCU) is moving to terminate a theater professor who expressed the opinion that an extremely minor incident on campus did not merit a dramatic response from the department’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.
“Sorry but I don’t think it’s a big deal,” wrote the professor, Steven Earnest, in reference to the matter. “I’m just sad people get their feelings hurt so easily. And they are going into Theater?”
On September 16, a visiting artist spoke with two students of color who explained that they were hoping to connect with other non-white students on campus. The three of them subsequently wrote down the names of other students of color who might wish to connect and discuss their shared struggles. They left this list of names on a classroom’s whiteboard; the next class saw it and thought that non-white students had been singled out for some nefarious purpose. A protest was planned.
The diversity committee investigated—and swiftly cleared up—the matter. “We believe it is important to inform the student body that the intent behind the list was as a resource for new students who are looking to be in community with other BIPOC students,” wrote the committee in an email to campus.
Even though the accusing students, who were wrong, created this problem, Earnest is now looking at the real possibility of losing his job for noting the overreaction.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has gotten involved in the case:
A theater professor wasn’t sufficiently outraged about a list of names on a whiteboard. The college’s next act: probable termination.
Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education calls on Coastal Carolina to reinstate Dr. Steven Earnest, who was suspended from teaching after criticizing student protestors who staged a walkout because they saw the names of students of color written on a whiteboard and mistook the list as malicious. In fact, it turned out to have been a list of students who might want to hang out together.
“I thought I’d seen everything, but my head is still spinning from this case,” said Ronnie London, FIRE’s Faculty Legal Defense Fund vice president. “A professor stands to lose his job for not being sufficiently mad about something that wasn’t meant to cause anger in the first place. Coastal Carolina’s response is not only overly dramatic, but also unconstitutional.”…
Students critical of Earnest’s emails accused him of being racially insensitive and dismissive of students of color. Several also called for Earnest to be fired and protested by boycotting theater classes.
“It was upsetting to be accused of racism by students and others with whom I have never interacted,” said Earnest. “But it was even more upsetting to have these false accusations ratified by a university that I have called home for over fifteen years.”
To recap: There was no incident of racism here. Nothing happened. There was no problem until ignorant, overly-sensitive students who didn’t understand what was going on decided to create a problem out of thin air, and Professor Earnest is the one at fault.
Featured image via YouTube.
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“who expressed the opinion that an extremely minor incident on campus did not merit a dramatic response from the department’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee”
A political commissar/officer was always attached to Soviet military units. This committee is no different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commissar
The entire exercise is simply to strike fear into people and let them know who the power is. Sometimes just taking out a random person just to show others you can do it is fine exercise in totalitarian control.
The Gestapo used to do it, for example. They would just choose a guy at a random house, take him to headquarters of a couple of days and grill him. Where were you on this date. Where where on on that date. Have you ever met this person. Have you ever utter anything negative about Adolf Hitler. What about your wife and children, etc.
Then he is released, and everyone wonders why he was hauled in for questioning. Then, because he has the big eye on him, all his friends disassociate with him, and his employer, not wanting to get tangled up in whatever is going on, fires him. And he did nothing. They just needed to lean on someone to terrorize everyone else to ensure they stay in line.
This is what they do. Be verbally hostile to them? Declare you have rights? Tell them they will hear from your attorney? That just makes them laugh and lean on you all the harder.
It’s what totalitarians do. They are not snowflakes. They are aggressive sociopathic bullies. They use imaginary aggrievement as an excuse to strike out at you. You do not have had to do anything. They just need to terrorize someone. They feed on the power trip, and like a junkie, need more, and more, and more. No amount is too much.
Exactly.
Behold the perpetually outraged, wasting precious oxygen.
I am surprised he was not shot on the spot.
The complainants need to be identified, and then get slapped around, kicked in the pants and other places, and tossed out of the school.
They were not outraged or offended. They probably received low grades and retaliated. I knew a high school teacher who gave two coed bad grades they richly deserved. They made sexual allegations just short of rape. The case was tossed out after he was drained financially. Vindication did no good; he was ruined.
Perhaps it is time for conservative students to start putting the beat-down on these woke snowflakes.
Perhaps it’s time for those woke ignoramuses who make false accusations to be held accountable. That would be the most useful thing they learn: accountability and responsibility. They are the ones who should be terminated, not the professor.
Problem number 1: Some students thought they needed to get together with others who look somewhat similar to them to discuss their “shared struggles.”
Problem number 2: Some other students saw a list of names, connected the existence of the list to the skin tone of the people on the list and assumed something bad was afoot.
Problem number 3: Someone thought there should be an investigation of this potential outrage.
Problem number 4: When the outraged students failed to take a scalp, because there was nothing to be outraged about, they decided to take one anyway.
Because they wanted to.
Because their outrage was more important than the facts.
Because they are incapable of being embarrassed by their own silly overreaction to something trivial.
Because taking scalps is what really matters to them.
Because no one ever taught them that acting like total self-important crap-heads is bad.
So just to sum up.
A bunch of racist students decided that they wanted to hang out together based on skin color, and they reported it because they thought a WHITE person made the list based on skin color. When they found out it was just ‘BIPOC’ racists, it was no longer a big deal.
+10
The names of the offended students are never revealed. Nothing will change until they are.
On the plus side, a professor of Theatre at that Uni will hardly be a Roger Scruton.
We need some administrators who aren’t going to fall for this crap.
Few and far between? or non-existent?
They appointed the Diversity committee. They may be the ones wanting to make a point that non-experts are not to opine on anything like this, but to defer to the “experts”. (clowns)
The teachers need to go on offense. The next one to be singled out could be one of them.
Walk away from the classroom until the students who perpetrated this stunt are publicly shamed.
Make a point.
Homeys don’t play this blame game.
I don’t know how this would happen, or that it makes to stop working and interrupt everyone’s education because of what a few unknown students did.
I would start with who is targeting this professor’s job. They certainly have responsibility if something happens to his job. Maybe he or she will explain who is pushing them to do this. The problem may go deep in the administration, and/or they may want to fill that faculty position with a BIPOC person instead.
Also, the Diversity Committee wants to be the experts that make all determinations about anything where the word “race” comes up. How DARE a non-member, especially a white one, express an opinion. He’s not EXPERT.
Remember just a few days ago there was a story where the Diversity committee made a decision because they “wanted to be seen as an effective resource” for solving some type of problem. It’s all about asserting their power.
Because their claim to “expertise” is extremely tenuous, I’d say laughable. I have my opinions about race, they have theirs, and theirs aren’t any better than mine. This is the mentality they’re desperate to stamp out, to force us to take them seriously.
The Chinese communists must look at the Dhimmi-crats’ utterly cancerous and corrosive influence on American society, culture, civics and academia, and marvel at how successful these neo-communist totalitarians have been in instituting Maoist/Stalinist purges, “struggle sessions,” bullying intimidation behavior and persecution campaigns against any person who is even accused of a scintilla of “wrongthink” or a millimeter divergence from Dhimmi-crat orthodoxies.
I am Outraged by your Outrageous Lack of Outrage !!!!