UCLA prof responds to students' 'woefully racist' charge: 'My record is pristine'

A UCLA professor said he's been suspended and has retained counsel after students called for his firing when he questioned a request for a final exam that could only improve their grades because of recent "traumas" related to George Floyd's death.

"I love UCLA and would like to return to what I’ve done for 39 years. ... My record is pristine when it comes to any accusations relating to alleged discrimination," Professor Gordon Klein of UCLA's Anderson School of Management told FOX Business on Wednesday.

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A UCLA Anderson spokesperson confirmed Klein's classes have been reassigned to other faculty and said the school could not comment further because of "confidentiality and privacy laws and concerns."

Klein said he's received threats after a student's petition called for his firing based on his "woefully racist" response. The petition has more than 20,000 online signatures.

Students identifying themselves as nonblack allies of their black classmates told Klein their request was “not a joint effort to get finals canceled for non-black students ... rather an ask that you exercise compassion and leniency with black students in our major," according to Inside Higher Ed.

"Thanks for your suggestion in your email below that I give black students special treatment, given the tragedy in Minnesota," Klein responded according to the petition. "Do you know the names of the classmates that are black? How can I identify them since we've been having online classes only? Are there any students that may be of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them?"

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UCLA student Preet Bains started the petition because he thought Klein's response was "backhandedly racist," he told school paper The Daily Bruin.

"Speaking such sarcastic rhetoric … really undermines the Black Lives Matter movement, making it seem like any students asking for accommodations during this time are doing it for selfish reasons and he's really discounting anything that students might be going through," Bains told The Daily Bruin.

Klein's response was within his First Amendment rights, lawyer Katlyn Patton of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education said in a statement. FIRE sent a letter to UCLA demanding Klein be reinstated on Wednesday.

"Klein has significant rights to manage the content and direction of his course, and his disagreement with the students' reasoning does not amount to harassment or unlawful discrimination," Patton said.

Also at UCLA, lecturer Lt. Col. W. Ajax Peris has apologized but is still being investigated for reading "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr. aloud to his class, including the n-word, according to the Washington Free Beacon. Peris is white.

UCLA higher-ups including political science chair Michael Chwe said they "share students' concerns that [Peris] did not simply pause and reassess their teaching pedagogy to meet the students' needs" when "many students expressed distress," according to an email obtained by the Free Beacon.

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The university could not punish Peris "for exercising his expressive or academic freedom," FIRE's Patton said.

"Peris's academic freedom, as a faculty member at a public institution bound by the First Amendment, includes the right to decide whether and how to confront or discuss difficult or offensive material, including historical readings that document our nation's centuries-long history of racism. Doing so does not amount to unlawful discrimination or harassment," she said in a statement.

FOX Business' inquiry to Peris was not returned at the time of publication.

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