Treanor said last week that he learned that the professor had used a humiliating and hurtful pejorative term, “with an age-old history of harm to the Asian people.” Treanor wrote in his email to the school that he had met with students from the Georgetown China Law Society and the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association and said he and the professor were engaged in a serious dialogue about the incident. A professor at Georgetown Law School was fired after comments she made about many of her “inferior” students went viral, triggering a storm of reactions on social media. (NOTE: The title of this article has been updated to reflect the fact that Ilya Shapiro did not hold the title of Georgetown Law Professor.) Bill Treanor, the dean of the law school, said in a statement Thursday that he was “appalled that two members of our faculty had a conversation containing reprehensible statements about the evaluation of black students.” Pro. Werro (t.co/GdLZbMTKXH) of @GeorgetownLaw #GeorgetownLaw has a very racist way of conducting his “cold call” in law school. #LawSchool #Lawyers #Racists #StopAsianHate #education #WashingtonDC pic.twitter.com/EKM7oUdHVg Last week, associate professors Sandra Sellers and David Batson of the Georgetown University Law Center suddenly found themselves unemployed after two short clips of an accidentally recorded online conversation in February were shared on social media. In the video, which was published in two segments, Sellers and Batson discussed Sellers` concerns about the performance of black students in their trading class. (The students had apparently left the online course and the professors thought they had a private conversation.) Whether the professors actually did something that justifies punishment is another question. When it comes to moral righteousness or injustice to have this conversation, to express those feelings (as Sellers did), or to question them (as Batson did not, at least in this recording), people can and do not agree. Slate`s Stern, for example, appears to believe georgetown law didn`t act quickly enough to crack down on the professors, as it was informed of the remarks Monday morning and didn`t fire Sellers until Thursday after the video was released. In his resignation letter, Shapiro said Georgetown had been inconsistent in applying the principles of free speech and that leaders had systematically failed to take action against professors who made provocative statements criticizing conservative lawmakers and judges. A professor at Georgetown University`s Center for Law apologized after a video surfaced on Twitter last week showing him with a racial slur when he called a student in class. Treanor said he gave the two professors the opportunity to provide additional context, and then informed Sellers that he would end their relationship with the law school with immediate effect.
Wilson further argues that while there is no justification for the suspension of the professors in question for their statement, there is even less justification for Sellers` summary dismissal. The Georgetown Black Law Students` Association said in a statement it was “discouraged” after Treanor announced last week that Shapiro could join the faculty. The group had previously circulated a petition calling on the law school to withdraw Shapiro`s job offer because of his “racist rhetoric.” The four-month investigation found that Shapiro could not be fired because of the tweets in question — which sparked new debates about free speech on campus — for posting them a week before starting his job at the school. But the impact of the news and the handling of the case by Georgetown Law School Deanor William Treanor made faculty membership “untenable,” Shapiro wrote in his resignation letter. “The statement I made was in the classroom shortly after the break, in which I enthusiastically noted the wide variety of languages spoken by the class members,” Professor Franz Werro wrote in a note to his class published by the university. “Since I`m not a native English speaker myself, I didn`t know it was a pejorative term as I understand it now. I`m really sorry I used it. In a later note to the law school community, Werro said he realized that his use of the word “caused real injury and pain to many people in the Georgetown community and beyond.” “If Georgetown Law takes swift and decisive action to repair the damage, it will demonstrate a clear commitment to diversity and inclusion,” eight student groups wrote in a letter to Dean William M. Treanor, which has also been signed by hundreds of people on and off campus. They also said that while they appreciated the professor`s apology, they thought it was wrong, noting that anti-Asian racism is prevalent around the world and that it is inappropriate for a professor to address a student with his or her supposed race. “Whatever my intention, I have caused irreparable damage and I am truly sorry,” Sellers added. “For this reason, I am immediately and voluntarily resigning from my position as an adjunct professor.” A Georgetown law professor after “reprehensible” comments about black students William M. Treanor, dean of the law school, issued a statement the day after the incident.
Last month, Treanor announced that it had put a new administrator on leave pending an investigation into whether he had violated the school`s policies on professional conduct, non-discrimination and anti-bullying.