Teh One Who Knocks
07-31-2017, 01:16 PM
By the Heat Street Staff
http://i.imgur.com/gh5Zyo8h.png
A former Johns Hopkins University professor claims he was suspended from teaching after making a politically incorrect joke about a call center in Pakistan, saying he was viewed “like a criminal”.
Dr. Trent Bertrand, an international economics professor at Johns Hopkins University, was suspended from his teaching duties last December. He recently published an essay detailing the trouble he went through after he made the joke.
The professor says during a class discussion about outsourcing, he joked about an unemployed American worker and a mental health hot line run by a call center in Pakistan.
The joke in full, according to Bertrand:
An American loses his job due to his work being off-shored. He is very depressed and calls a mental health hot line. He gets a call center in Pakistan where the call center employee asks, “What seems to be the problem?” The American responds that he has lost his job due to the work being sent overseas and states, “I am really depressed and actually suicidal.” The call center employee says, “Great. Can you drive a truck?”
After he made the joke, a few of his students filed a complaint against him with the school’s Office of Institutional Equity (OIE). In response to the complaints, Bertrand sent out an email to his colleagues in which he slammed the school for caving in to political correctness.
He wrote: “Johns Hopkins is dedicated to the world of ideas … unless of course those views diverge from the dominant groupthink protected under the banner of ‘political correctness’ or threaten the safe spaces and comfort of anyone else.”
His attack on the school’s conduct didn’t help and he was suspended from teaching on December 6—just three classes before the end of the semester.
The professor claims the college justified the suspension on the grounds that three students complained that the joke fosters a “hostile learning environment.”
Bertrand was cleared of all charges on July 14 with the university’s inclusion unit admitting that his “conduct was not sufficiently severe or pervasive to rise to the level of harassment under the University’s Anti-Harassment Policy,” Campus Reform reported.
Despite being cleared of the charges, the professor, who had taught there for six years, left the university after it declined to renew his contract. He told the campus watchdog that the investigation “played a role” in not renewing his contract.
Johns Hopkins University affirmed their support for free speech and said the refusal to renew Bertrand’s contract concerned “a number of factors” but denied it was politically motivated
http://i.imgur.com/gh5Zyo8h.png
A former Johns Hopkins University professor claims he was suspended from teaching after making a politically incorrect joke about a call center in Pakistan, saying he was viewed “like a criminal”.
Dr. Trent Bertrand, an international economics professor at Johns Hopkins University, was suspended from his teaching duties last December. He recently published an essay detailing the trouble he went through after he made the joke.
The professor says during a class discussion about outsourcing, he joked about an unemployed American worker and a mental health hot line run by a call center in Pakistan.
The joke in full, according to Bertrand:
An American loses his job due to his work being off-shored. He is very depressed and calls a mental health hot line. He gets a call center in Pakistan where the call center employee asks, “What seems to be the problem?” The American responds that he has lost his job due to the work being sent overseas and states, “I am really depressed and actually suicidal.” The call center employee says, “Great. Can you drive a truck?”
After he made the joke, a few of his students filed a complaint against him with the school’s Office of Institutional Equity (OIE). In response to the complaints, Bertrand sent out an email to his colleagues in which he slammed the school for caving in to political correctness.
He wrote: “Johns Hopkins is dedicated to the world of ideas … unless of course those views diverge from the dominant groupthink protected under the banner of ‘political correctness’ or threaten the safe spaces and comfort of anyone else.”
His attack on the school’s conduct didn’t help and he was suspended from teaching on December 6—just three classes before the end of the semester.
The professor claims the college justified the suspension on the grounds that three students complained that the joke fosters a “hostile learning environment.”
Bertrand was cleared of all charges on July 14 with the university’s inclusion unit admitting that his “conduct was not sufficiently severe or pervasive to rise to the level of harassment under the University’s Anti-Harassment Policy,” Campus Reform reported.
Despite being cleared of the charges, the professor, who had taught there for six years, left the university after it declined to renew his contract. He told the campus watchdog that the investigation “played a role” in not renewing his contract.
Johns Hopkins University affirmed their support for free speech and said the refusal to renew Bertrand’s contract concerned “a number of factors” but denied it was politically motivated