Group Defends UCLA Professor Suspended After He Refused to Reschedule Final Exam for Protests

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Gordon Klein has been teaching at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management since 1981. He received an email from a student on June 2, requesting that he adjust his final exam requirements for black students due to the ongoing protests.

Klein wrote back and explained his reasons for rejecting the requests. {snip}

But many students objected to the tone of his email, and a petition calling for him to be fired was quickly started on change.org.

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Klein was placed on leave the following day, effective until June 24, while school officials decide what to do next.

“As a public institution, UCLA is bound by both the First Amendment and the laudable promises of academic freedom it makes to its faculty members,” Katlyn Patton of The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education wrote in a letter to UCLA officials Wednesday. {snip} “Klein must be immediately reinstated, and UCLA’s leaders must make clear that their commitment to academic freedom is stronger than an online mob.”

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