A professor at the University of Kansas at Lawrence is on leave while the university investigates a complaint accusing her of racially discriminatory behavior in class, the Lawrence Journal-World reports. Graduate students, meanwhile, are pursuing a social-media campaign demanding that she be fired.
Andrea M. Quenette, an assistant professor of communication studies, told the newspaper she was notified on Friday morning that five individuals had filed the complaint with the university’s Office of Institutional Opportunity and Access. She said she did not know the identities of those who had filed the complaint.
The complaint followed more than a week of public criticism of Ms. Quenette by graduate students who say they were outraged by statements she made during her Communications Studies 930 class on November 12, the morning after a heated universitywide forum on race.
Ms. Quenette, who has been teaching at Kansas for two years, disagrees with how the students characterize the class discussion on that day. She believes that her comments were not discriminatory and that they are protected by academic freedom.
The graduate students see it differently. “It was outright racism,” Amy Schumacher, a first-year Ph.D. student who was in the class, told the Journal-World. Ms. Schumacher said she believes the professor “actively violated policies” during the discussion, hurt students’ feelings — including the one black student in the class, who left “devastated” — and has a history of being unsympathetic to students.
The students have aired their complaints in an online letter and through messages posted to Twitter.
Joe Monaco, a university spokesman, said Ms. Quenette would remain on paid leave while the Office of Institutional Opportunity and Access investigates the complaint.
