It is baffling that a professor standing up against racism has been punished while those engaging in racist actions are rewarded. UCLA needs to do better in protecting their POC and other minorities, among both their faculty and student body
Only after contacting the chair from the EEB department did the professor get replaced. Still, no action has been taken against Dr Nonacs, who had a raise approved the following year. Again, a very different response than what was given to Dr. Amarasekare
The entire class contacted the office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), asking that Dr Nonacs be removed from the course. The EDI refused, and instead offered instead only an apology from the professor, which the student rejected
The student was very uncomfortable and asked the professor to stop using her as an example. Instead, Dr. Nonacs continued doing so for several minutes, until the student walked out of the class. Still, the professor then tried to force her to talk to him later in the day
The other professor, Dr. Nonacs, was teaching an undergraduate Field Biology Quarter, and made comments about a Black student's skin and eye color and hair type to talk about how traits can change in different environments (aka phenotypic plasticity)
None of this has stopped the department from giving Dr Pinter Wollman a raise from 32% between 2019 and 2022, and promoting her to Full Professor. A stark contrast to their attitude with Dr. Amarasekare, who I reiterate, was left with no pay for a year and is still with a reduced salary
It should be stated, the students were not refusing to discuss an important scientific topic, but instead only asking that a critical analysis be made of the real world harm such topics were a part of, a harm many of those students still experience to this day
But this letter had no effect, since the professor was still teaching that same class the next year (Winter 2022), and assigned the exact same activity, which lead to a similar reaction in that year's students
POC were naturally uncomfortable with this debate, and asked that there be more discussions of the identities and ideologies behind that debate, to which the professor replied using terms such as "touchy" and baggage". They even sent a letter to the department chair and Anti-Racism taskforce
The class activity in question was a debate on the science of Nature vs Nurture, but with no acknowledgement of how the Nature side was espoused by eugenicists, and was used to justify a lot of scientific racism in recent history
Dr. Pinter-Wollman taught a graduate class on Evolution in Winter 2021 in which she refused to acknowledge POC students' discomfort in a class activity and refuted any requests to make accommodations.
However, some evidence has been released of two professors engaging in racist behavior against students in that same department, with no consequence to them. In fact both professors have since had salary raises approved and one even promoted to Full Professor
For those unaware, a POC female professor for the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) has been suspended for a year, and then put on "involuntary leave" at 20% salary reductions, apparently for standing up to racism she experienced within the department
So it seems that UCLA, on top of punishing a POC professor for speaking out against racism, has also done nothing against professors for engaging in racist behavior
