It took me a long time to get the joke and what was offensive about it.
The way I read it first, the Pakistani on the phone was counseling the guy to get the prototypical job that is absolutely protected against being offshored: truck driving. Which wasn’t that funny, of course, except for the notion that the road might be full of depressed, suicidal truck drivers, which is also not very funny. I thought what was possibly offensive about the joke was its cavalier treatment of mental illness.
I also thought, “Who has call centers in Pakistan? India, sure. The Philippines. North Dakota. But Pakistan?”
My first thought was that for someone who is a supposed expert on international economics, he’s woefully ignorant of the basic history of the Indian Subcontinent and how events in the last 70 years lead to a wide divergence between the geopolitical and economic development between India and Pakistan…along with how the US played a critical role in all that during those decades.
Such as our support of various military dictators who came to power via coups or how the Cold War influenced our support for the more religiously extremist factions within the Pakistani military and political establishment…especially during the 80’s.
And some folks wonder why Pakistan is still very underdeveloped economically compared to India despite staunch US support for many decades…but also why it has had a long history of political instability and violence as underscored by the multiple coups since Partition in 1947.
I can assure you all, you don’t get tenure by telling Trump jokes. Not that I would know that. Seriously. I’m kidding. I keep my opinions under a strict regimen of under my breath, no names mentioned, asides.
Repeated said joke to my son and asked how he’d take it if a professor presented it. @OHMomof2 and @JHS he hesitated (he didn’t get it initially either…:-), looked perplexed said, “oh…” and then said, “that’s pretty stupid for a professor to say something like that in a class”…
Yes I’d agree…PRETTY STUPID…
I didn’t get it, either. It doesn’t even match the stereotypes I’m familiar with. The Pakistani mental health hotline guy wants to recruit Americans to be suicide bombers? That’s…not a thing.
Indeed. It made me wonder how in the world did someone so woefully ignorant about key areas which impact his field managed to not only graduate from undergrad, but get admitted to grad school and have an advisor willing to sign off on his graduate degree.
Some may wonder whether his graduate degree was obtained from a Cracker Jack box…
I’ll go with bigoted remark now that I get the meaning. My mind totally went to the “can’t outsource trucking” conclusion and wondered why that was controversial.
(and yea, I know truckers have automation/self driving trucks headed straight for them)
Private colleges can do whatever they want. The firing was justified if even one student in a one down position was offended. It’s interesting that a professor who works within a diverse community would think that something like this could be funny and tolerated.
In my student’s private boarding high school, a teacher had nicknames for all his students, many were racist and offensive, calling one gay boy Nancy and another Asian student “inscrutable,” He obviously thought they were terms of endearment, and didn’t see why anyone would be offended. In the end he was asked to leave but not until the end of the school year.
Don’t teachers get that you have to have mutual respect in the classroom between student and teacher for any learning to occur? There was a lot of information in the school’s handbook about what student behavior would not be tolerated in the classroom, but nothing about what teachers’ behavior wouldn’t be tolerated. But I think thank goodness, this is changing.
He just doesn’t sound intelligent or creative enough to teach at a school of this caliber. Or any caliber, really. You can teach all kinds of lessons on international trade without resorting to racist “jokes.”
@materof2 There’s a key difference between telling jokes about Chinese and Pakistani people, and telling jokes about Trump. Chinese and Pakistani people are huge, diverse groups of individuals. In telling jokes, you’re judging an entire group based on cirsumstances individuals likely had little control in creating. Trump is a single individual who has made his decisions in life, and those decisions can be fairly mocked. It’s not bigoted to go after him for what comes out of his own mouth.
Now, I’m not exactly against politically incorrect comedy (I do watch things like Archer and play Cards Against Humanity), but there is a time, place, and acceptable audience for that kind of stuff, and the classroom and workplace aren’t it. If your audience doesn’t walk through that door expecting offensive humor, you’re probably going to piss people off.