A chemistry professor has been banned from teaching at Syracuse University for jokingly listing the school's COVID-19 rules and regulations under the headline "Wuhan Flu or Chinese Communist Party Virus" on a syllabus.
"Syracause talks a big game when it comes to free speech, promising its students and faculty the full array of expressive rights," said Zach Greenberg of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which has written a letter to Syracuse officials demanding the professor, Jon Zubieta, be reinstated.
"Yet the university has become an inhospitable place for the free exchange of ideas, and the administration seems almost proud of how it consistently fails to uphold freedom of speech when challenged. Syracuse isn’t just forging the path for censorship in American higher education, they’re paving it orange and blue," Greenberg said.
FIRE wrote to Syracuse to remind administrators that although private institutions are not bound by the First Amendment, Syracuse is required to uphold its many laudable promises of free expression.
On Aug. 25, Zubieta's syllabus began circulating online, and the university issued a statement condemning the "offensive" language, banning him from the classroom and launching an investigation.
Officials informed the professor he was to have no further contact with students until the investigation is complete.
"My intention was to mock the euphemistic conventions of PC culture rather than the Chinese people or their great heritage and traditions," Zubieta said. "The actions of the university in placing me under suspension and in practice seemingly supporting the accusations of racism and Sinophobia are deeply disturbing."
The coronavirus actually was widely called by media during its early stage the "Wuhan virus, "Wuhan flu" or "Chinese virus."
A video montage of the references:
The media abruptly changed its tune, however, attacking President Trump for calling it the Chinese virus. Longtime Trump antagonist Jim Acosta of CNN accused Trump of "xenophobia."
FIRE said in its letter to Syracuse that "expressive rights may not be diminished merely because some find the content objectionable."
Zubieta's expression does not constitute discriminatory harassment, FIRE said, noting Syracuse already agreed in its written policies that professors have "the right to use the academic forum provided by the university to discuss controversial subjects and to express ideas with which some or most of the members of the community strongly disagree."
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