In-House Counsel

General Counsel Uses The N-Word During A Lecture, Loses Her Job

Can professors please STOP already?

By  
on

(Image via Getty)

Here I am, once again, asking professors to refrain from using the N-word in class.

I know you think you have some pedagogical reason for doing so, but it isn’t really a good one. In its full form, it’s a painful slur and the shock value and/or prurient thrill from uttering a forbidden word isn’t worth it. Remember even though they’re students, these *are* adults, and have almost certainly already come across this and all manner of racial slurs before. So, you aren’t treading new and interesting educational ground, you’re just hurting people.

So, let’s get into the details. Dinah PoKempner was serving as adjunct professor at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University and she reportedly, repeatedly (more than 10 times), used the N-word in a zoom lecture while discussing the “comparative legal treatment of hate speech.”

Now, PoKempner has lost her day job as general counsel for Human Rights Watch. A Columbia representative said, “A student complaint filed with our Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action is under review. We are very clear that classroom discussions must be conducted with civility, tolerance and respect.” They also noted adjuncts don’t have continued employment after the end of the semester.

Corporate Counsel describes the incident:

In a video recording of the Zoom lecture, PoKempner laughs while recounting her experience watching a Southern Poverty Law Center lawyer use the N-word in an attempt to get a Ku Klux Klan member to be candid during a deposition in a civil rights case.

Sponsored

In addition to using the term in the classroom setting, PoKempner was also caught in a hot-mic moment using the word again.

One of the students in the class reported that PoKempner paused the discussion after students objected to her use of the N-word—but she forgot to mute her mic and was overhead using the racial slur again while talking with a man in the background, who said, “This can get really big.” PoKempner agreed, and they both laughed, the Columbia Spectator reported.

Her attorney, Marjorie Berman of Krantz & Berman, issued a statement and an apology:

“Ms. PoKempner has dedicated her entire career to the protection of human rights. She used the n-word while teaching a class, solely for pedagogical purposes. She was providing a verbatim retelling of an incident involving the deposition of a KKK witness—by the Southern Poverty Law Center—that she had witnessed as a young legal intern. In that story, a lawyer used the word in questioning a KKK witness, to provoke a like response from the witness and get it on the record, which was important to winning the case. Her pedagogical purpose was to inspire a discussion of whether it is ever appropriate to use such language for the purpose of eliciting hate speech, even for the goal of exposing and combating racism. Following the telling, she told the students that when she heard this over 30 years ago that it shocked her. Unfortunately, she did not consider the shock her students would feel and how this stifled the very discussion she sought to generate. She deeply regrets the impact of her words on students and apologized to them repeatedly in class for her insensitivity, and continues to regret her language.”

PoKempner’s apology is better than other professors who find themselves in similar situations. But in 2021, it should not be that hard to know you do not use a racial slur in class. Full stop.

Sponsored

headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Topics

, , ,