Just from watching that lecture - he seems like a genuinely good professor. He provided tons of context before he introduced that example, and it's a real-world example from a language that nearly a billion humans speak. By choosing an example that is from a language that is foreign to most of his students - he's helping his students understand that the actual concept he's teaching is not just an english linguistic feature or a western-centric mannerism - it's a communication pattern that occurs widely.
I feel bad for the future UCS students who will miss out on his class. I also wonder to what degree this decision will have a chilling effect on the content of other lecturers at UCS. Could history professors see this as a reason to exclude primary content that reflects the racist realities of the past? Or maybe music professors will reconsider whether they can teach the work of artists who might be cultural appropriation? It's hard to say.
I hope that another university makes this professor a job offer - or at least speaks out in support of his teaching. This seems so bizarre that I can only reckon with it by imagining it's a west-coast cultural phenomenon. I certainly wouldn't imagine this going down the same way in my home state (North Carolina) - but maybe I'm underestimating how pervasive this extreme sensitivity trend really is. There WAS an incident with a professor who got suspended at NC State recently ( https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article235... ) but in that case - the professor was publicly mocking his students in a way that may or may not have been interpreted as sexist. Even if the suspension for that scenario actually overkill (which I think it was) - it seems crazy pants to put the professor who was thoughtfully teaching a lecture in the same category as one who gets a kick out of insulting students for laughs.
I feel bad for the future UCS students who will miss out on his class. I also wonder to what degree this decision will have a chilling effect on the content of other lecturers at UCS. Could history professors see this as a reason to exclude primary content that reflects the racist realities of the past? Or maybe music professors will reconsider whether they can teach the work of artists who might be cultural appropriation? It's hard to say.
I hope that another university makes this professor a job offer - or at least speaks out in support of his teaching. This seems so bizarre that I can only reckon with it by imagining it's a west-coast cultural phenomenon. I certainly wouldn't imagine this going down the same way in my home state (North Carolina) - but maybe I'm underestimating how pervasive this extreme sensitivity trend really is. There WAS an incident with a professor who got suspended at NC State recently ( https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article235... ) but in that case - the professor was publicly mocking his students in a way that may or may not have been interpreted as sexist. Even if the suspension for that scenario actually overkill (which I think it was) - it seems crazy pants to put the professor who was thoughtfully teaching a lecture in the same category as one who gets a kick out of insulting students for laughs.