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(warning: contains no obscene images, just incredibly offensive text)

Thanks. Nice job. Please indulge this odd community by sticking with it if you are so inclined. And it sure wouldn’t hurt if you can come out from behind the anonymity although one can understand why another might decline to do so. My wife works at Cal and was able to vouch for some details from your account, so I remain pretty convinced you’re not full of it.

Your story there about the professor tolerating the “what happened to all the black people” comment really, really pisses me off. In my view, that’s a moment when the prof properly would switch back on the lights and demand “Who said that?”. There being nobody who would cop to it, it’s then “Who heard that?” at which, presumably, lots of hands go up. And then its “This lecture will not continue until the person who said that owns up and apologies and leaves for today or is identified and expelled from the hall and possibly more. I can wait. I’ve got all day. I’ve no tolerance for such crap because it fundamentally undermines everything I’m trying to accomplish in these lectures. I will not teach in such a hostile environment.”

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to impose some collective responsibility in such a case.

Easy for me to say, of course.

If you go back to the other post, I responded to Laura’s request.

To be clear, I have trouble doubting the existence of such experience and I don’t wish to obligate the commenter to rehearse grievances here.

To be equally clear, I don’t presume the anonymous commenter is who he or she claims to be.

It is simply an interesting topic and since we’ve seen a few responses that seem to be critical of the action, there may be some value in exploring the topic more carefully.