There’s more to the story about Mizzou professor suspended for Wuhan ‘mask’ comment
It’s the first day of a University of Missouri marketing class being taught via Zoom, and as they’re all getting acquainted, one of the students tells the others that he’s from China. “China? I’ve heard of China,” says Professor Joel Poor. Where in China? “Actually, Wuhan.”
“Wuhan? Let me get my mask on, OK?” the professor says with a laugh, obviously joking. He’s still employed, for now, but has been relieved of his teaching duties pending a Title IX investigation.
Is this:
1) Exactly the kind of mindless overreaction that Joseph Robinette “Fidel” Biden can’t wait to force on all of us in the coming “socialist utopia” we’re hearing so much about this week.
2) Awkward, but no reason to suspend the guy, especially when he did apologize. Free speech is at stake, and in a university setting, that’s only everything.
3) About right, because what else has this person who thinks he’s so funny said in class? That’s what a full investigation will tell us.
4) An underreaction. Immediate termination is the only response to such a racist crack.
While some students are pushing for No. 4, my first reaction was No. 2. But as it turns out, I was wrong, and Mizzou was right to fully investigate.
Words do matter — If they don’t, I’ve wasted my life — and so do context and intent. If you watch Poor’s whole exchange with the Chinese student, you can see that the professor does seem to have been trying to put the young man from Wuhan at ease.
After the snippet of the clip that everyone has seen, he goes on to say, “OK, well, welcome. Have you had any problems with anything, in terms of traveling?”
“I stayed here since last semester, so I stayed in the United States for the whole pandemic time.” the student responds.
“And the summer, were you able to get back?” No. “Well, if you need a place to stay, I have an extra bedroom and stuff, if things get tough, I don’t know. I’m sure you’re all taken care of, but it’s been a real problem for a lot of Chinese residents and travelers. I’ve only been to Shanghai and Chongqing in China, so I haven’t had the pleasure of going to Wuhan.” If anything, Poor seems too chummy; extra bedroom, no no no.
Was the Chinese student offended by the crack about a mask? Maybe, but having been a foreign student myself, several times, I tended to doubt it. You have to be tough to put yourself in that situation, and honestly, if you took umbrage every time someone said something dumb about your home country, you’d be worn out all the time. And friendless.
In Belgium, my host family asked me if I’d ever eaten food that didn’t come out of a can, and many of those I told I was from a small farm town in southern Illinois reacted with something along the lines of, “Oh, Chicago! Al Capone! Bang, bang, bang!” Yeah, no.
In France, I was asked more than a few times whether everyone back home was fat, and was told more often than I found comfortable that our culture was rapacious, our history imperialistic and our country full of fascists. In Mexico, I repeatedly heard that I sure was tall.
Did I mention that I loved my time in each of these places, and also in Italy, where if anyone painted Americans in ways that struck me as silly, I no longer remember it? I’m confident I also said things in each of those countries that made locals roll their eyes on the inside.
In fact, if everyone who said something dumb got the hook, would anyone still be employed, or have any friends from different backgrounds, or ever get the chance to learn anything?
No, but just as I was ready to conclude that maybe Poor’s suspension was an overreaction, I learned that as is so often the case, there was even more to this story.
A spokesman for the University of Missouri said the ongoing Title IX investigation is also looking into some public comments, made on social media, by women who say Poor routinely made them uncomfortable in class.
“Anyone who has taken a class with Joel Poor,” tweeted one of them, “knows this is not the first time he’s said something sexist, racist and/or inappropriate. He would often make remarks about his sex life during class that were extremely uncomfortable and unrelated to the curriculum he teaches.”
Like what? “He would tell us how his Fitbit would alert him of how his heartbeat was increasing due to how rigorous the sex he has is. He’d also be weirdly flirty with students during interactive lectures, typically targeting girls wearing sorority letters.”
“I also had Joel Poor for marketing,” said another woman MU wants to hear from, “and can say he routinely made ‘jokes,’ statements and comments that were inappropriate.”
A third said, “He told our 400-person lecture that if we got this particular answer wrong, we might as well ‘hang yourself from the ceiling fan.’ He has made horribly inappropriate comments for years, and I’m so glad he’s no longer teaching.”
If all of the above is accurate — and figuring that out is the whole point of the investigation — then this isn’t a case of cancel culture, but of culture finally catching up to the reality that such comments were never OK.
As we figure out how to let people evolve without letting them off the hook, the only right answer is to learn as much as we can before deciding anything at all. And the real problem with cancel culture is that we don’t always take the time to do that.
This story was originally published August 27, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
