Professor Sues UCLA for Suspending Him After He Refused Request to Mark Black Students’ Work More Leniently Than White Students

 In June of last year, UCLA professor Gordon Klein, a professor in accounting for 40 years, was in the news for being suspended from UCLA. His suspension was because he refused a request from a student to grade black students more leniently than white students.

The anonymous student emailed Klein to say black students were traumatized by the death of Geroge Floyd. The student’s request to discriminate against white students didn’t sit well with Klein. He responded to the request with an understandably snarky email and refused the request:

Are there any students that may be of mixed parentages, such as half black half-Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half? Also, do you have any idea if any students are from Minneapolis? I assume that they are probably especially devastated as well. I am thinking that a white student from there might possibly be even more devastated by this, especially because some might think that they’re racist even if they are not.

I have a law degree, and I’m pretty sure the university’s EDI agenda violates Proposition 209, the California Constitution’s prohibition against race-based preferences in public education. Voters enacted this decades ago and reaffirmed it, last year, at the ballot box. So, I opted to follow the state Constitution and my conscience.

After he sent the email, Professor Klein was swamped with nasty emails and attacked on social media. What’s worse, he was suspended from UCLA for two weeks.

Klein took action this week when he sued the dean of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management (pictured below) in a Los Angeles court for damages after his suspension of two weeks. He claims his work as a consultant suffered dramatically after the suspension.

Antonio Bernardo, the dean of the UCLA Anderson School of Management