An economist is speaking out after he was suspended by administrators for telling a joke in class that a handful of students complained created a “hostile learning environment.”
Adjunct economics Professor Trent Bertrand reports that his contract with Johns Hopkins University expired June 30 without an opportunity for him to bring his case to the Academic Council, concluding campus leaders “would rather have a sacrificial lamb to appease student protesters than to provide a faculty member with any semblance of due process.”
Writing for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal this week, Bertrand retells his joke, a riff on work being sent abroad for lower wages, and it goes a little something like this:
An American loses his job due to his work being off-shored. He is very depressed and calls a mental health hot line. He gets a call center in Pakistan where the call center employee asks, “What seems to be the problem?” The American responds that he has lost his job due to the work being sent overseas and states, “I am really depressed and actually suicidal.” The call center employee says, “Great. Can you drive a truck?”
Bertrand reports that three students out of 68 found it offensive, and they formally complained to the university’s Office of Institutional Equity that it created a “hostile learning environment.”
The piece, titled “My University Treated Me Like a Criminal Over a Joke,” describes what happened next:
For the past six years, I have taught an undergraduate course on international economics at Johns Hopkins University. Most of my students thought it was a very good course. So I was shocked when, on December 6, 2016, I was met at the door of my classroom by Johns Hopkins security personnel and barred from entering.
The next day, I received a letter from my dean suspending me from my teaching duties—just three classes before the end of the semester. … At the time of my suspension, the investigation into those complaints by Johns Hopkins’ Office of Institutional Equity had not even started, but still the administration somehow concluded that my teaching had to be terminated immediately.
Bertrand states he believes university leadership acted quickly in part because they were upset over how he responded to news of the Office of Institutional Equity probe — with frustration and a call for the university to honor its duty to academic freedom.
His email exchange with officials at the time, reported by Red Alert Politics, illustrates he told his superiors he had taught the class the same way for the last six years and had never received any complaint, adding: “I must admit that I am not a great fan of political correctness, safe spaces and an unwillingness for students to engage in discussions about issues on which people disagree.”
The article goes on to detail how Bertrand cited the Office of Institutional Equity’s own policies pledging support for different points of view, but instead he was suspended with pay.
Writing for the Martin Center, Bertrand says he believes the real reason he was barred was he called out the Office of Institutional Equity as Orwellian.
He had replied via email to his superiors at the time: “Johns Hopkins is dedicated to the world of ideas and that world expands exponentially as those with different experiences and points of view share their knowledge and interpretations with one another […unless of course those views diverge from the dominant groupthink protected under the banner of ‘political correctness’ or threaten the safe spaces and comfort of anyone else].”
In the end, Bertrand concludes, “our universities have gone badly astray when professors can be yanked out of their classes and denied rudimentary academic due process simply because a student couldn’t take a joke or administrators cannot tolerate criticism of actions that threaten to undermine the idea of a university.”
Read the full Martin Center piece.
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