You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
Duquesne University is responding to student complaints that a teaching assistant in psychology said the N-word last week in class while reading a quote by 19th-century abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth. Duquesne, which faced a parallel controversy in 2020 involving a faculty member who used the N-word in class, said in a statement, “The graduate student instructor has apologized to the class on at least four different occasions and is taking educational steps to learn from this experience and rebuild trust with her class. The Bias Education Response Team is working with her to provide recommendations and education to assist, and to give support for everyone involved.”
Crystal McCormick-Ware, the university’s chief diversity officer, in a separate statement commended students for using the bias response team and thanked “everyone involved for respecting how the subsequent educational process can work.” The graduate student “has expressed her willingness to learn, listen, and move forward with her teaching career, and her actions have backed up what she has said she will do.” According to WPXI-TV, several students said that the teaching assistant first explained that the word was historically relevant, but she later apologized. “She was making excuses for her actions and saying that she didn’t understand how painful that word was, and that’s just not good enough for me in this day … in 2022,” one student reportedly said.
