UCLA Professor Suspended and Under Police Protection After Refusing To Exempt Black Students From Final Exam

Gordon Klein, an accounting professor in the Anderson School of Business has taught at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) for almost 40 years.  He is now suspended and under police protection in his home.  The reason? Klein refused to exempt black students from his final exam and sent a pointed rebuttal to students asking for the “no harm” exam. Parts of the response was certainly mocking in tone, more so than I would have considered appropriate.  The school has launched a formal discrimination investigation. However, the suspension, investigation, and death threats against Klein reinforce the fear of many in the academy of a raising orthodoxy on campus and a lack of support for faculty involved in controversies.

According to Inside Higher Ed, a group of students asked Klein for a “no-harm” final exam that could only benefit students’ grades as well as shortened exams and extended deadlines.  They cited recent “traumas, we have been placed in a position where we much choose between actively supporting our black classmates or focusing on finishing up our spring quarter . . . We believe that remaining neutral in times of injustice brings power to the oppressor and therefore staying silent is not an option.”  They specifically noted that this was not “a joint effort to get finals canceled for non-black students”  “but rather an ask that you exercise compassion and leniency with black students in our major.”

Klein wrote back to one student that he was being asked to make a distinction that he could not possibly make. This is the entirety of the message:

Thanks for your suggestion in your email below that I give black students special treatment, given the tragedy in Minnesota. Do you know the names of the classmates that are black? How can I identify them since we’ve been having online classes only? Are there any students that may be of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half? Also, do you have any idea if any students are from Minneapolis? I assume that they probably are especially devastated as well. I am thinking that a white student from there might be possibly even more devastated by this, especially because some might think that they’re racist even if they are not. My TA is from Minneapolis, so if you don’t know, I can probably ask her. Can you guide me on how you think I should achieve a “no-harm” outcome since our sole course grade is from a final exam only? One last thing strikes me: Remember that MLK famously said that people should not be evaluated based on the “color of their skin.” Do you think that your request would run afoul of MLK’s admonition? Thanks, G. Klein

The controversy led to immediate demands for the professor to be fired.  Thousands have signed a petition that declares Klein must be fired for his “extremely insensitive, dismissive, and woefully racist response” and “blatant lack of empathy and unwillingness to accommodate his students.”

UCLA has launched an investigation that could lead to such termination and issued a statement that “We apologize to the student who received it and to all those who have been as upset and offended by it as we are ourselves.”  It has also agreed to extend all exams, presumably for all students.  I think that the extension of the time was a good idea for the school as a whole and I can certainly understand the school objecting to the tone of the response at a time of great unrest and trauma in our society.  However, the email was a poorly crafted effort by Klein to object to what he viewed as an unworkable, race-based system of accommodation.  One can certainly disagree with those objections, but the principle of academic freedom is to allow such views to be stated without fear of termination.

UCLA is also dealing with another demand for termination after Political science lecturer W. Ajax Peris, read aloud MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which includes the n-word. He also showed a documentary to the class in which lynching was discussed.  This might have been inappropriate in Klein’s accounting case but Peris was teaching the history of racism.  Students demanded that he stop the discussion but he apologized for any discomfort and continued his lecture.

The Political Science Department condemned Peris and  referred Peris to UCLA’s Discrimination Prevention Office for an investigation. UCLA will host a town hall for students in Peris’ classes to discuss the “controversy.” While Peris has apologized in a writing and video, students are demanding his firing.

Such actions are applauded by many faculty who have supported the increasing limits on free speech and academic freedom on campus. There has been a startling erosion of such protections for those with opposing views at universities and colleges.  Many faculty are intimidated by the response in these controversies and fear that supporting academic freedom or free speech will result in their being labeled racist or lacking of empathy. In three decades of teaching, I have never seen the level of intolerance for free speech that we are seeing across the country.  As I noted, there are valid objections to raise in these incidents, but the response of universities is clearly designed to send a message to other academics that they cannot expect the protections of the universities in such controversies.

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A Pretty Creepy Proposal to Track Coronavirus at Our Schools

The school year ended prematurely, but what about the fall. Surely, no parent is really looking forward to yet more months of home-schooling. We’ve all seen the Instagram posts. People are losing it. And that feeling should be morphing into anger, as we learn with every passing day that the coronavirus wasn’t a big deal. It doesn’t spread easily on surfaces anymore, the face mask protocol is a fiasco, its mortality rate is less lethal than the seasonal flu. The outbreak is over. The curve has been flattened. It’s time to end this nonsense. There is no better event to undercut what we’ve been told in the past three months than during the unrest caused by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police.

Before, it was 'stay home and save lives.' Don’t be selfish, help medical workers. Now, it’s ‘why aren’t you outside protesting racism, you selfish bastard.’ I’m done. Done. Anything new about COVID, I’m going to ignore. And now the World Health Organization says asymptomatic people aren’t responsible for new infections. That’s why we were told to stay home. The asymptomatics can touch things and spread it unknowingly. Well, both of those arguments have been torched. So, in reality, the George Floyd protest advocacy, plus the WHO and CDC study pretty much deliver a double-tap to the whole lockdown narrative. It’s over. Everyone should go out, shop, and do whatever. And the kids should go back to school.

Yet, in keeping with overreaching government actions, we have this creepy proposal to track this virus. Let’s just put beacons on our kids that tracks their every move (via Wired):

When student return to school in New Albany, Ohio, in August, they’ll be carefully watched as they wander through red-brick buildings and across well-kept lawns—and not only by teachers.

The school district, with five schools and 4,800 students, plans to test a system that would require each student to wear an electronic beacon to track their location to within a few feet throughout the day. It will record where students sit in each classroom, show who they meet and talk to, and reveal how they gather in groups. The hope is such technology could prevent or minimize an outbreak of Covid-19, the deadly respiratory disease at the center of a global pandemic.

Schools and colleges face an incredible challenge come the fall. Across the world, teachers, administrators, and parents are wrestling with how to welcome pupils back into normally bustling classrooms, dining rooms, and dorms, while the threat of the coronavirus remains ever-present.

Many plan to proceed gradually and carefully, while keeping kids spread out as much as possible. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for reopening schools recommend staggered schedules that allow for smaller classes, opening windows to provide more air circulation, avoiding sharing books and computers, regular cleaning of buses and classes, and requiring masks and handwashing. Many see some form of distance learning continuing through next year.

Yeah, to those folks who think this was a ploy in an exercise in the expansion of government power, please keep sipping that goblet. It’s looking like that more and more every day. Electronic beacons on our kids. Yeah, I’m sure parents would love that (sarc.)

SOURCE 





To grade or not to grade?

There will be no F’s in Michael Maguire’s freshman classes at Boston Latin Academy this term.

At Charlestown High, Francis Pina agonizes over the prospect of giving some of his struggling ninth-graders an "incomplete'' for the spring.

In remote classrooms across the state, normally tough teachers are relaxing their rigor, students are getting multiple chances to redo assignments, and a letter grade has mostly vanished, at least for now.

In Massachusetts, where schools closed in March due to the pandemic, state education leaders have urged districts to institute some form of a credit/no credit system, and not hold students back because of work missed this spring.

Yet local policies are varied: Some school districts, including Worcester, are awarding students “points” instead of letter grades this quarter; others, including Brockton, are letting students pick their highest grade from an earlier term; and some are adopting the state’s recommended credit/no credit system. (At many schools, credit, or a “pass,'’ indicates that 60 percent of the remote learning assignments were done.)

The policies have frustrated some families who say a pass-fail approach dilutes the hard work of students who’ve successfully completed their online assignments and reliably showed up for Zoom class. But they’ve also caused concern among teachers who agonize over the fairness of doling out an “incomplete” to a student who may be dealing with sick relatives, unreliable Internet and computer access, or new obligations at home.

At the high schools, juniors especially worry about how they might fare on their college applications under a pass/fail system. Some, such as Josh Schreiber, at Wayland High School, worked hard to lift his grades this semester, a period when college admissions officers start taking close notice of applicants’ high school record. His school switched the rules in April. Now, the third and fourth quarters are combined and assessed on a pass/fail basis, with a pass granted to students who “meet or exceed expectations,” according to the school’s website.

“I consider myself to be a pretty good student,'' said Schreiber. “I work hard, and with the ‘pass/fail’ it’s really hard to stay motivated, because you really don’t have to do very much to pass, and you’re not rewarded at all for doing all the work.”

James Perkins, whose daughter is a junior at Natick High School, also expressed frustration over the decision to scrap letter grades. Second semester is a pivotal period for juniors, he said. While he understands the need to take into account the unequal online learning experiences of students, Perkins adds that “bringing down one student does not lift another student.”

In many cases, school officials wrote and revised new grading policies multiple times over the spring — four times in Natick’s case — as they learned more about the effects of the pandemic and of school building closures on their students. School leaders say that when they finally settled on an approach, usually in late April or early May, they knew not everyone would be satisfied.

“I feel badly that students who had really good grades as of March 12 may feel like they’ve lost those grades,'' said Brian Harrigan, principal at Natick High. But “it just became clear to us that the system was broken,” he said. Grades from the first semester will remain intact, Harrigan said, and their grade point averages will not change.

Several district leaders said they couldn’t fathom traditional grading because they lacked essential infrastructure necessary to continue teaching students over much of the spring.

In Brockton, years of budget cuts and layoffs stripped the school system’s technology department bare. Roughly 80 percent of the district’s 1,400 teachers were not trained on how to run a virtual classroom, and more than half of the district’s 17,000 students did not have a device or Internet access at home, said Superintendent Mike Thomas.

When Brockton schools closed March 12, many students disappeared, with school staff unable to reach them, Thomas said.

“We’ve been hit really hard with this, so the last thing we wanted to be is punitive on our grading policy,” Thomas said.

Under Brockton’s policy, students can keep the grade they had earned prior to school closure, and even improve those grades by continuing to do some work. For the final term of the school year, which began May 4, students will earn credit (which can be replaced by their highest grade from a previous term on the transcript) or no credit. Those who don’t get credit will be steered to online summer school or remediation in the fall, Thomas said.

“There will be no failing grade,” he added.

Worcester school officials also said they thought they needed to take a generous approach. More than 3,500 of its 25,000 students did not have Wi-Fi access when schools closed and the district took several weeks to distribute laptops.

"We did not want penalize anybody for not having access or connectivity,'' said Superintendent Maureen Binienda.

Instead, most students will earn points — from zero to four — for the final stretch of the school year.

While several top-performing students critiqued the more lenient approaches, others said they appreciated the flexibility.

“I think a lot of students were really happy to see that we’re going to pass/fail,’’ said Astrid Umanzor, the senior class secretary at Revere High School, adding that the absence of grades makes it easier "to manage during this difficult time.”

Despite the new grading policies, some Boston teachers say they worry that even an incomplete might be too harsh, depending on the student’s circumstances.

Grading will be fairly complex for students in grades six through 12. This year, the third and fourth terms, stretching from early February through the end of June, will be merged into one, said Matt Holzer, headmaster at the district’s Green Academy, who helped develop the grading guidelines.

The new third term grades will be based on a combination of students’ performance in school from Feb. 3 to March 16; online learning March 17 to May 1 (which will be weighed less heavily since it occurred before the district had a formal distance learning plan); and more formal remote learning in May and June, according to the school department’s remote learning plan.

Teachers can give students a pass, an incomplete, or a letter grade— including, potentially, an F. High school students still must meet credit requirements in all subject areas to graduate, although no students will be held back, Holzer said.

The final grade is a weighted average of all three terms, although that grade cannot be lower than the grade a student had at the time of the shutdown, he added. So a student cannot be given an F solely based on performance in the spring.

Teachers say they are finding their own ways to follow the grading guidelines and want to err on the side of generosity considering the challenges many students face.

“I grade very lightly [these days],” said Maguire, the Latin Academy teacher. “I don’t fail a student if they didn’t quite get it.

Maguire has taught Latin at the school for the past 27 years. Before schools closed, his students were working on translating Julius Caesar’s reports to Rome. He has since lightened the workload, with students delving into the more relatable mythology of Daedalus and Icarus. This term, he will base grades on student assignments, quizzes, and a long-term project. No one will get an F, he said.

“I’m learning how to do this, too,” he said. "So I don’t take any of my faults and project it.”

Maguire’s colleague José Valenzuela teaches seventh-grade history to more than 100 students at Latin Academy and Advanced Placement human geography to about 30 juniors and seniors.

As of now, 11 of his students are on their way to an “incomplete” for the third term. Yet the only one of the 11 who might get an incomplete for the entire year is a student who had been failing class long before schools closed down.

Regardless of what grades are doled out, "next year, teachers are going to have a big job ahead of them to make sure that no students fall through the cracks,'' Valenzuela said.

Lea Serena, a second-grade teacher at Boston’s Mather Elementary School, said last month that she was agonizing over what to do about three students who have not been participating since schools closed. Usually, students who are absent for this long would be given an incomplete. But that didn’t feel quite right now, she said.

A parent of one of the missing students never used a computer. Another mother, a native of Cape Verde, barely speaks English. Serena, who is of Cape Verdean heritage, tried extensively to communicate with the woman, even enlisting her own mother’s translation help.

Following weeks of effort, an aide went to the mother’s house and helped her son sign on. Serena ran into the other two students in person last week when she was running errands — although she has yet to see them online.

After much deliberation, she has decided not to give out any “incompletes” this term.

SOURCE