Academia, Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Free Speech, Society

Boston University Professor Sparks Controversy Over Tweets Denounced As Racist and Sexist

GrundyPic-150x150Boston_University_seal.svgWhile Professor Saida Grundy has not actually started teaching at Boston University, she is already facing calls for her removal from the faculty. After being hired by BU, Grundy let loose with a series of tweets that are denounced as racist and sexist. Grundy tweeted, for example, “White masculinity isn’t a problem for america’s colleges, white masculinity is THE problem for america’s colleges.” The tweets have triggered a debate over whether there is a double standard for such comments and whether such comments should be treated as protected speech.

In a January tweet, Grundy wrote: “Every MLK week I commit myself to not spending a dime in white-owned businesses. and every year i find it nearly impossible.” Previously, she posted comments like“Deal with your white sh*t, white people. slavery is a *YALL* thing.”

Brundy is expected to start teaching in June and Boston University spokesman Colin Riley insisted “Professor Grundy is exercising her right to free speech and we respect her right to do so.”

The controversy has raised the question of whether a white professor denouncing blacks or females as the problem on college campuses would be viewed as suitable to teach. We have seen offers withdrawn after newly hired professors posted anti-Israeli tweets. Likewise, there were demands for the termination of a math professor at Rochester for controversial comments about rape.

The question is where to draw the line. As might be expected, I tend to gravitate instinctively toward free speech in most of these cases, including the most recent involving Professor Grundy. While I find her comments bizarre and biased, she made these comments in social media and has not been accused of treating white or male students in a discriminatory or abusive manner. Indeed, she has not taught any students at BU. The key however is that the school must be prepared to show the same tolerance for the next professor who makes what are viewed as racist or sexist comments of a different kind. The concern is that colleges and universities are engaging in selective enforcement and content-based regulation of speech. Ironically, Grundy may lay the foundation for a future lawsuit at the school if it proceeds against a white racist or a sexist professor. Her retention would be evidence that could be used in a case of disparate treatment.

What do you think?

57 thoughts on “Boston University Professor Sparks Controversy Over Tweets Denounced As Racist and Sexist”

  1. Independent Bob, I think we need to dispense w/ the wink and nod of protected classes and simply put out an official list of the protected classes of whom NOTHING can ever be said. We need an official PC list. Of course, it will be amended daily as the list is ever growing. Much of the intramural vitriol, that is a no no to talk about, is between who should be @ the top of the list. Gays currently hold that title, pushing aside black folk. That may be part of the rioting we’ve seen? Trying to make a statement to be once again @ the top of the list.

  2. I wish I could say a similar statement about black females, But I can’t. I’m an older middle aged white guy. One of my doctors is a black woman, whom all her patients love. And I think Condi Rice is the bast person to be President. This BU professor is exercising her 1st amendment rights. Somehow I don’t feel the same way about the professor as I do about the other 2.

  3. Is this the best BU can do when looking for professors? She’s a professor of complaining about “white-sh*t”? Sad.

  4. A weekend blogger once tried to make the point that colleges are not liberal, and PC does not reign supreme on college campuses. That shows you the mindset of some.

  5. Pogo, I look it upon their pathology as guilt and self loathing. Maybe we need to start self flagellation classes for their ilk. Better than tai chi or yoga for their needs.

  6. It’s a lonely world, Russia is the closest thing the non-insane have to a friend:

    http://28sherman.blogspot.com/2015/05/think-180-from-vox-you-find-truth.html

    Fisher quotes a founding member of an opposition party (Vlad Lukin) with a money quote. This is something many in the alt-right would say with ease.
    It is in the genes. America has a simple ideology – that there is only one truth in the world, that truth is held by God, and God created the United States to be an embodiment of that truth. So the Americans strive to bring this truth to the rest of the world and to make it happy. Only after that will everything be well. This ideology has a strong influence on their policy. A wise traditionalist and a geopolitical expert, Kissinger had good reason to call such politicians “Trotskyites” for advocating a world revolution, albeit in their own way, but always in the front and in shining armor. This is a tempting ideology and has been professed by different countries at different times, not only the United States.

    Universalism. Shining city on the hill. Evangelical export of its values. Trotsyites. This is basic stuff that one can see if one chooses. Fisher is a guzzler of Kool-aid, so he sees this religious notion as problematic. America just defends democracy and human rights, see noobs, and in Fisher’s admission does not see that he calls the US point of view on democracy and progressive labelled “human rights” as a religious truth that should be spread to all. What right does the US in playing hero defender of any of that around the globe? Fisher plays right into it like a true believer.

    The idea of aggression is an interesting one here because Fishers states military movements as aggression and positioning military hardware as aggressive because he cannot see that social subversion of the other is aggressive. What right does Fisher and his ilk have to push Lady Gaga and the Gay Brigade onto Russians, Turks, Iranians or the Chinese? That is a form of social aggression. Our Hollywood exports are a product, and when laced with ideas and themes straight out of Harvard for social change, it is weaponized. The Beatles three minute rock songs might not be weaponized but Will + Grace “Just Like Us” garbage is. The progressives only want to remind you that words are weapons when they want to play the victim or righteous hero.

  7. This isn’t a close call or debatable issue. It’s absurd to claim those who share skin color bear guilt for each others’ sins. Since I have zero doubt she would (correctly) view the accusation that blacks are similarly guilty of each others’ sins it’s even more ridiculous to believe white skin only has this magic property.

    The school should note her comments everywhere students sign up for classes. No one should sign up for classes only to find out after the fact their professor is a racist.

  8. Cultural Marxism (radical feminist, LGBTist, anti-white, anti-Western Civilization) is the hegemonic ideology of the American Empire. It seems a nice for globalist banksterism-note that every billionaire in the US supports mass immigration. You can see its roots in the Frankfurt School’s most influential work, The Authoritarian Personality.Those with doubts about this should google “paul gottfried” + “frankfurt school.” Especially see the long discussion at http://www.amnation.com/

    A Cultural Marxist moral panic-similar to the Satanic child abuse hysteria of some years ago:
    http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/White-Lives-Matter-flyers-trigger-outcry-in-6251307.php

    Flyers with the slogan — “#White Lives Matter” — an apparent racist response to the widely used social-media hashtag, #Black Lives Matter, have been tossed on local driveways and lawns in the Compo Road area, prompting local officials to denounce the message.

    Officials say they are troubled by the distribution of the flyers in town, which have unsettled many of those who found them on their doorsteps over the last week.

    “I am deeply concerned and disappointed that statements like this have found their way to Westport homes,” First Selectman Jim Marpe said in a statement Friday. “This kind of racial ugliness has no place anywhere, and certainly not in Westport.”

    The first selectman added, “I have always been proud to speak of Westport as an open and welcoming community, and I continue to believe that the vast majority of Westporters practice that belief through tolerance, inclusion and everyday civil behavior … This past year has reminded us that our nation still needs to deal with some serious racial issues, and now we know that Westport is not immune.”

    The local flyers apparently respond to the #Black Lives Matters hashtag used on social over the last year in the wake of the deaths of black men in confrontations with police in several high-profile incidents.

    Marpe said he has asked TEAM Westport, a group that tries to foster greater diversity and tolerance locally, “to work with Interfaith Clergy, the Board of Education and the appropriate town agencies, to lead our community’s response to these outrageous statements and, more importantly, the behaviors and beliefs that underpin them.”

    Harold Bailey, the TEAM Westport chairman, said Friday he’s working on setting up meetings with the leaders of a number of organizations to get a “consolidated response” to the flyer distribution.

  9. Does anyone actually know what the definition of racism. Racism describes patterns of discrimination that are institutionalized as “normal” throughout an entire culture. It’s based on an ideological belief that one “race” is somehow better than another “race”. It’s not one person discriminating at this point, but a whole population operating in a social structure that actually makes it difficult for a person not to discriminate.

  10. I would not hire her because she does not know how to spull Y’all. YALL is incorrect. So she has not understanding of the South. Uncle Clarence Thomas would not spull it wrong. Now if she had a Confederate Flag on her wall then I would probably not support her as a professor at BU. BS maybe. And what was the asterisk (*) on the word YALL for? Maybe she should not grade white students if she hates them. Spull =spell; white=white trash; YALL=mispulling of Yale; BU aint Yale; Harvard, Yale, BU all have one thing in common- their itShay doesn’t stink. Or so they tink.

  11. Dear Tom, her comments were not necessary and they were racist. The
    Problem really is that we now have two standards against which we assess speach. One is for one group of people like this BUprofessor and the other is for people who may disagree with her.

    We see this every day one law for the rich anyone for the poor. One law for members of the Obama Administration and their friends and the other for whistleblowers and the rest of us.

    There should be one standard and one law.

    1. Justice Holmes – I call Trigger Warnings for all her classes.

  12. “bettykath
    But she’s right.    ”

    bettykath and Tony Sidaway outs themselves anti-white heterophobes.

    “There are some exceptions since it’s not all white men”

    Some of your best friends are white male, amiright?
    Ha ha ha.

    Lefties don’t mind being hypocrites as long as they get to wear the Prog label while doing it.

  13. The problem is: could she competently grade a white male student in her class?

  14. Are there seriously people who would equate these very necessary and appropriate comments to those of racists and rape apologists? If so, shame on them. They are the problem.

  15. But she’s right. There are some exceptions since it’s not all white men, but it’s white men who have established the institutionalism of inequality for African-Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and women. And it continues.

  16. My father was educated at Boston University, Harvard, West Point Air Cadet in Colorado, Colombia University and WWII Vet who served overseas in Italy as photo recon intelligence officer & pilot.

    My dad said 2 things that haunt me to this day. Man is a piece of sh*t and death is the only way out.

  17. White – males stay away from classes taught by the hate. Grading will not be on performance but appearance only.

  18. “The key however is that the school must be prepared to show the same tolerance for the next professor who makes what are viewed as racist or sexist comments of a different kind…”

    It was already tried, at Marquette in Milwaukee.

    From Commentary:
    The Defenestration of a Conservative Professor

    Liberal Sharia is acceptable in the University setting, and promoted.
    So ‘free speech’ has become meaningless twaddle.

  19. Racism comes in all sizes and colors. If the PC police are going to police everyone should be subject to the same scrutiny. I do, in fact, think her comments are racist. Here’s a test. If a white professor said: I commit one day a year not to buy in black owned businesses what would happen.

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