Professor Calls Student a Man From China, Hundreds Demand the Faculty Be Reprogrammed

If you’re from America and male, are you an America man?

If so, don’t apply that naming convention to other nations.

Just ask a Georgetown University teacher.

Amid what looks to have been a Zoom class, Law Professor Franz Werro inquired whether anyone had questions.

He attempted to identify a student, whose name he couldn’t recall.

Franz winged it:

“So any other surprise? Or, what about you — Mr. China man?”

Combining that pair of identifiers wasn’t met with mass approval.

Some claim the professor was filled with hate. And if criticism can be believed, he deems people inferior due to their features.

Cynics might call those bold jumps, but we’re living in an era of leaps and bounds.

The video — viewed over 148,000 times — has hosted hashtags #Racists and #StopAsianHate.

To answer people's questions: 1) No, the student's last name was not Chinaman. 2) "Chinaman" is a racial slur that relates back to the era of Chinese Slavery in America.

— SensenSz (@choose_ur_term) February 11, 2022

In the aftermath of the utterance, 570 students, faculty and alumni signed a letter decrying Georgetown’s “deeply embedded” problems. They believe Franz and all faculty should be forced into reprogramming.

Per the missive:

If Georgetown Law takes swift and decisive actions to correct the harms, it will demonstrate a clear commitment to diversity and inclusion.

From The Washington Post:

The letter…calls for mandatory faculty implicit bias training to “better hold professors accountable and avoid requiring us to try to discern their intent.” It asks for improvements to the system for reporting bias incidents, including timely responses from the administration, and public acknowledgment of the incident.

In an email, Georgetown Law Dean William Treanor promised a “serious dialogue.”

More seriousness:

“We must take a serious look at our culture, structure, systems, and processes to ensure that we are a community that fosters respect, equity, and justice.”

William denounced Franz’s words as “demeaning and hurtful” as well as “a slur with a centuries-long history of harm to Asian people.”

The dean has met with the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association and the Georgetown China Law Society to sort things out.

“We are also working to design an approach to inclusive pedagogy for all faculty,” he wrote.

How does the classroom occurence constitute “bias”? Such wasn’t made clear.

But Franz might benefit from a bit of context. English isn’t his first language. In fact, he also teaches at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.

Nonetheless, the ~~European man~~ professor submitted a mea culpa:

“I apologize that I used an offensive term in class yesterday. The statement I made was just after the break in the class, during which I had enthusiastically noted the great diversity of languages spoken by members of the class. As a non-native English speaker myself, I did not appreciate that it was a derogatory term, as I now understand it is. I am very sorry I used it. I am committed to educating myself because I want all students to feel welcome in my classroom.”

As indicated by Yahoo! News, everyone’s trying to heal:

The university’s Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA) has listed steps for the school administration to take in order to redress the harm done and to ensure a productive learning environment for all students.

In a statement shared to Twitter by APALSA President Claris Park, the APALSA E-board noted that while Werro apologized to his class, he had not yet made a public apology to the school’s AAPI population, as of Feb. 12.

Regarding Professor Franz Werro's use of the term "Chinaman" in class on Feb. 10 at Georgetown Law: pic.twitter.com/QcwuoeZtpj

— Claris Park (@park_csa) February 11, 2022