Posted on April 1, 2022

Students Demand Professor Be Fired Over ‘Racist’ Comments in Viral TikTok

Khaleda Rahman, Newsweek, March 29, 2022

Students are calling for the firing of a college professor who was captured in a viral video making comments described as “offensive and racist” in Portland, Oregon.

The video, which was initially posted on TikTok, showed a man in the driver’s seat of a vehicle with the window rolled down. The clip begins while he is mid-sentence, saying “…hiring illegal immigrants” to a person off-camera.

He later asks the person if they were born in the U.S. When the person says they were, he asks: “Where?”

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When they say Portland, he then asks whether the person’s “rude colleague” was born in the U.S.

The man then turns towards the passenger-side window, where another person appears to have taken offense to his questioning. He accuses that person of threatening him before the clip ends.

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But it appears to have been brought to the attention of Reed College, a private liberal arts college in Portland, after it was shared on Twitter by user @thatdaneshguy, who identified the man in the video as Paul J. Currie, a psychology professor at the college.

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In a statement posted on the college’s website, Reed’s president Audrey Bilger and Kathy Oleson, dean of the faculty and a professor of psychology, said the matter “has our full attention.”

Their statement did not name Currie, but acknowledged that the video “shows a Reed faculty member making offensive and racist comments at a local business.”

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Currie reportedly apologized for his “reprehensible behavior” in an email to students, faculty and staff.

“First and foremost, I would like to sincerely apologize to all of you,” he said in the email, according to a screenshot shared on Twitter. “I know I have deeply offended you and for that I am truly sorry. There is no excuse to ever engage in offensive and discriminatory behavior and I accept full responsibility for my actions.”

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But some students are calling for Currie to be fired.

The Reed chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) issued a statement saying Currie was “targeting service workers with racist and xenophobic abuse.”

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