A professor at UCLA was temporarily suspended in June 2020 for refusing to be more lenient when grading black students compared to the rest of his class, and he is now suing the college for damages.
Gordon Klein, an accounting professor at the college, said in an interview with the Daily Caller, “[Professors] are becoming more like robots … They avoid anything that may be controversial or colorful or humorous … Anyone who goes anywhere near a controversial topic runs the risk of being cancelled, being fired, being suspended”.
Following the death of George Floyd, a student asked Klein to make the final a “no harm” exam for his black students. This meant that the grade would only count if it helped the student.
Klein said he responded, “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?”
He was suspended and banned from campus within three days after students started calling for him to be reported and fired. Three weeks later he was reinstated.
Klein explained that he thinks he was suspended as a publicity stunt to move attention away from the college’s “reputation as an inhospitable place for persons of color”. He noted that the school does not have any tenured black professors and only a few Latino professors have tenure.
Klein mentioned that Antonio Bernardo, the Dean of Students for UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, has sent multiple emails to UCLA staff in regards to racial issues. He told the Daily Caller, “The dean seems to believe he is a racial justice crusader as opposed to someone in charge of giving people an objective and elite education”.
After his suspension, Klein said that many of his clients cut ties to him and he lost a large piece of income. Multiple top lawyers decided not to represent him against the college out of fear of losing their own relationships with clients.
“For all my years [at UCLA] and all the friends I have there, only one individual reached out to me [to express solidarity], and he’s retired, so he apparently perceived that there’s nothing they could do to him”, he said, noting that most of his colleagues cut contact after his suspension.