Sue 22: If we are quoting the article, I found other parts relevant:
"Bertrand also said that a student last year complained to him about his Pakistani call center joke. That student was struggling with her mental health and considered his lighthearted treatment of the matter as an impediment to her education. In response, Bertrand advised the student not to let comments like that get to her.
“I told her I was in Afghanistan for 18 months, and people threw acid in the faces of little girls who were going to school. That’s an impediment to education,” Bertrand said.
(snip for brevity)
Another student currently in the class, junior Will Bryden, felt that Bertrand’s comments might offend some, but that Bertrand was not intentionally creating a hostile environment.
“He meant it simply as he did, which was to be humorous, and that’s understandable from my viewpoint,” Bryden said. “You’ve got to try to view things from the other person’s point of view and see how they meant it as well.”
Bryden said that sometimes students were responsible for creating the “hostile environment” in class.
“He was never aggressive with his viewpoint,” Bryden said. “He was aggressive in debating it and trying to defend it, but he wasn’t aggressive in his tone of voice or anything like that, while some of the students would get aggressive.”
The sensitive people on this thread would not have survived my tax law class. This guy’s is a teddy bear compared to that guy we had. We wore black clothing to blend in, so he wouldn’t call on us.
No, of course, this professor should be told to knock off the racist sort of comments, like that one about Chinese people looking alike. But no, this is not remotely an offense for which he could be fired.
An “impediment to her education” to hear an ill-advised joke? Give me a break.