When Dr. J. Angelo Corlett wrote and spoke several racial epithets in his classroom in early March, students in attendance, including one Black student not enrolled in his course, reported to university officials that Corlett’s words made them deeply uncomfortable. They said Corlett used the offensive term over 60 times and has used other slurs and loaded language. Students said Corlett also made a claim that no one would fire him unless he “killed or raped a student.”
In response to this incident, San Diego State University (SDSU) made the decision to remove Corlett from his critical thinking, race and racism courses for the rest of the semester. The institution has since come under fire from critics who assert that Corlett has academic freedom, being a full professor, and his right to freedom of speech has been taken away.
Corlett, a Latinx male, has said he spoke the n-word twelve times for the purpose of educating his students about racial epithets.
Dr. Frank Harris III, professor in the department of Administration, Rehabilitation, and Postsecondary Education at SDSU.
Higher education scholars agree, adding that creating safe spaces in classrooms requires cooperative effort from professors working with their students, staying flexible, and addressing the lack of diversity in curriculum. To create supportive environments for all learners, professors should adopt the adage that has guided healthcare workers for centuries: first, do no harm.
“Academic freedom means you can teach and write about the issues important to you in the matter you see fitting, but there’s a limit. No professor would be allowed to conduct experiments on people that we know would be harmful physically,” said Harris. “When we think about what these students experienced, there’s racial harm and trauma that comes with that. By allowing him to [teach] it this way, to exercise academic freedom in this way, we’ll expose students to harm and trauma in the name of academic freedom.”
Dr. Raechele Pope, senior associate dean and an associate professor at the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo agrees with Harris.
