You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
Students at Georgetown University are demanding accountability after law professor Franz Werro referred to a student in class as “Mr. Chinaman.” A video of the Feb. 10 incident has gone viral, attracting more than 140,000 views.
Werro apologized in an email the next day for using the anti-Asian slur, according to the legal news website Above the Law.
“As a non-native English speaker myself, I did not appreciate that it was a derogatory term, as I now understand it is,” he wrote. “I am very sorry I used it.”
A letter from the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association of Georgetown University Law Center called for a public apology from Werro to the affected students, mandatory implicit bias training, alternative course offerings for students who feel uncomfortable taking Werro’s classes and public acknowledgment of the incident from law school leadership, among other demands.
William M. Treanor, dean and executive vice president of the Georgetown University Law Center, issued a statement to students on Feb. 11, Above the Law reported.
“As a community of students, staff, and faculty we must take a serious look at our culture, structure, systems, and processes to ensure that we are a community that fosters respect, equity, and justice,” Treanor wrote in the statement. “We have significant work ahead of us to create a community in which students can learn in an environment that is free from bias, where they are able to foster positive connections with others, and where everyone feels supported and appreciated for their contributions.”
The incident follows another stir at Georgetown’s law school in late January, when Ilya Shapiro, incoming senior lecturer and executive director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, tweeted critically about President Joe Biden’s plan to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. Georgetown suspended Shapiro in early February following student pushback on his tweets, in which he said Biden’s SCOTUS nominee would be a “lesser black woman.”
Prior to both incidents, Sandra Sellers, an adjunct law professor at Georgetown, was terminated last March after making derogatory remarks about Black students.
