In an article titled “Georgetown Law professor terminated after ‘reprehensible’ comments about Black students,” we hear about a professor who is being fired from Georgetown Law after some inappropriate remarks made on a recorded classroom after class. Predictably, this is triggering some pushback from people overly concerned about “cancel culture” because of the nature of the quote published in that newspaper report:
“I hate to say this. I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks,” Sellers said in the video. “Happens almost every semester. And it’s like, ‘Oh, come on.’ You get some really good ones, but there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom. It drives me crazy.”
It’s a pretty good example of implicit bias and a professor who would probably gain something from some education about education and challenges of implicit bias in the classroom. It’s also pretty much impossible that this is the sole reason for the professor being fired (it seems she was quitting/resigning when placed on leave so there had to be some more things going on).
For comparison, I had a conversation in our department with Prof. Jen Richeson (before she moved to Yale) who studies race, bias and cognitive consequences that included the question “is there an achievement gap at Northwestern?” If you know the research, you’d know the term ‘achievement gap’ reflects puzzling results where URM students underperform unexpectedly. That’s kind of what the Georgetown Law professor is observing and the issues is not the fact that it exists, but what you think should be done about it.
When I was talking to Jen, our context was along the lines of ‘what are we doing wrong as educators that allows this to persist?’ as part of trying to identify how to reduce implicit bias effects in the classroom and/or if there were broader social or cultural effects on these students at the University that could be improved. Jen’s work includes seminal studies showing cognitive costs to things that I would describe as implicit bias (e.g., reductions in cognitive control associated with worrying about cross-race interactions). I think Jen’s idea is likely right and the practical question is how to ameliorate this. For me, it prompts self-reflection about classroom and other university interactions where I might be accidentally reflecting implicit bias and what can I do to continue to make progress on reducing that.
The problem with the out-of-context quote from Georgetown is that in many other cases, these kinds of observations are followed by more seriously inappropriate statements, e.g., repeating incorrect claims about innate ability of URM students or an attack on diversity measures in recruiting. Noting that your URM students are struggling isn’t a problem. Arguing that they should be excluded is a really big problem, a fireable problem.
When Jen was here at NU, I used to say to her a lot that people really need to think more about the fact that implicit bias is implicit. If you’ve worked a long time in a field that needs to improve its racial and gender diversity, it will be the case that the younger generation will not look like the older generation. Because that does not fit with your implicitly acquired expectations, it may feel weird to you and you won’t know why. However, it’s still your obligation to work through that, get used to it and get past any mistakes it causes in your interactions. Her response, fwiw, was that I should be going around saying that more, not her (she does enough public and education work in this area already). I don’t get asked to go on Oprah to talk about it, though, I just write things like this blog post.
And on the general topic of “cancel culture,” I’ll repeat what I’ve said here and elsewhere that I continue to be in favor of it. There are a lot more people not getting canceled who should be than people who are canceled inappropriately. When that balance shifts (a whole lot more), I’ll officially worry about it. Being completely, perfectly fair is an extremely hard thing to do. If you think a professor losing her job is a bigger deal than the students whose careers are damaged, you might need to do a little self-reflection on implicit bias yourself.