Suspended Professor Who Was Forced to Take Diversity Training Sues University
February 1, 2022 | Illinois
A professor who was targeted and suspended after using censored language in a test question to make an example of employment discrimination just filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC).
The controversy began in 2020 when Jason Kilborn, a law professor at UIC, posed a hypothetical question in an exam surrounding illegal discrimination in the workplace. The question referenced anti-black and anti-women slurs, but were not fully spelled out. Instead, they were simply displayed by their first letters, “n” and “b.”
Despite keeping the words censored, a petition was launched against Kilborn condemning him for the contents in question. A short time after, UIC suspended Kilborn and announced he would be forced to take a five-week diversity training course in order to return to teaching.
Yesterday, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) announced their partnership with Kilborn in a First Amendment lawsuit against the school. In the announcement, they claim that the diversity training Kilborn was subjected to “uses the exact same redacted slur in the training materials.”
“The only thing that will hold UIC accountable for its unconstitutional actions is a lawsuit,” Kilborn stated. “FIRE’s Faculty Legal Defense Fund gave me the strong medicine of real legal action, and UIC has given me no choice but to use it.”… (Excerpts from the Virginia Star)
