The Academic Freedom Alliance released a public letter to San Diego State University calling on the university to reaffirm the academic freedom of philosophy professor J. Angelo Corlett.
SDSU removed Corlett from the classroom after students complained that he had shown a slide with examples of racial epithets in his class on Philosophy, Racism and Justice and his class on critical thinking. His published scholarship has focused on issues of racism and hate speech, and he brought that expertise to bear in his classroom teaching.
Although Corlett does not currently seem to be under investigation for violations of university policy, he has been removed from teaching his classes and will apparently be "reassigned" to teach other classes in the future. The Vice President of Student Affairs and Campus Diversity asserted that such an administrative decision was "not about free expression or academic freedom." The university administrator is mistaken.
