Stories where a group of hypersensitive “woke” students browbeat a timorous administration into punishing a professor who has somehow irritated them are now commonplace. Hardly ever do administrators say to the students, “Quit your griping and behave like adults.”
That certainly didn’t happen at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s law school. A tenured professor is in limbo after a student griped that an exam question upset her because it contained “n*****.”
I write about this ludicrous story in today’s Martin Center article.
The question was perfectly reasonable. The professor (Jason Kilborn) had used it before without anyone going ballistic. But after one student whined that the insensitivity of that reference had destroyed her ability to concentrate, the die was cast. The school’s administration had to show its concern by suspending Kilborn and demanding that he grovel if he ever wanted to teach again.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education weighed in, informing the dean that its proposed punishment of Kilborn was a violation of its academic freedom policy and also of the professor’s First Amendment rights. After that, the school and Kilborn reached an agreement whereby his courses would be monitored but he wouldn’t have to submit to “training” so that he’d be able to better deal with minority students.
And then, the law school, under pressure from the students, went back on its deal and told Kilborn that he would have to undergo “training.” That was too much, and he has now filed suit.
The law school thus will have serious expenses just because its top officials didn’t have the backbone to tell a few students to act like adults. And it is almost certainly going to lose.