Professor quits over racist remarks
By Eric Ferreri : The Herald-Sun
eferreri@heraldsun.com
Feb 7, 2003 : 6:46 pm ET
CHAPEL HILL -- A contract professor whose racially charged comments caused more than half her graduate students to switch out of her UNC social work course has resigned.
Martha Lamb resigned late Friday, nearly a month after her comments, on the first day of a graduate level course titled "Social Work and Practice with Couples," distressed her small class of 16 students.
Lamb, who is white, was relaying experiences she had while a student at Carolina in the 1960s. She told students that, in the 1960s, some people had made the comment that acronym NAACP stood for "Niggers Ain’t Acting Like Colored People."
She followed by telling her students that comments like that are not commonplace today.
Students who heard the comments immediately felt uncomfortable and complained to school administrators, Dean Jack Richman said Friday.
In the weeks following the Jan. 13 incident, Richman and others talked to Lamb, and to students, and even held a discussion session between Lamb and some students mediated by faculty from UNC’s Center for Teaching and Learning.
The 90-minute exercise didn’t work out, Richman said.
"She used some insensitive, hurtful, disparaging words," Richman said. "During the hour-and-a-half, I had hoped they would be able to come to some understanding that she was trying to do something pedagogical that went awry."
But Lamb’s words, regardless of intention, proved too wide a gap to bridge, Richman said, stressing that the university’s racial harassment policy requires instructors to provide a comfortable learning environment.
"It wasn’t adequate teaching," he said. "(The students) got so uncomfortable they couldn’t (understand) anything past the statement."
Lamb couldn’t be reached Friday for comment, but she apologized for the incident in a message e-mailed to the students involved.
It read in part, "I have respect for each of you and the work you have done to address sensitive issues. I realize a quotation was used the first day of my class that contained offensive words, and I certainly apologize for its use. I expect we shall all be devoting additional energy to ‘getting it right’ in addressing cultural differences openly and celebrating our rich diversity in the future."
Richman said the incident was "highly disturbing," but he didn’t feel Lamb’s remarks were meant to harm.
"In talking to (Lamb), she is extremely remorseful," Richman said. "She has issued a formal apology. Her position is (that) she never meant to hurt anybody. She was trying to give historical context to her experience. From her point of view, she was trying to make the historic comparison."
Ten of the course’s 16 master’s degree students switched out of the course after the incident. The six remaining students stayed in until the attempted mediation. They wanted to switch out after that, but the deadline for changing classes had passed.
Richman petitioned the university successfully to reopen the drop/add period, and the six got to take the course with a new professor, Richman said.
About six of the 16 students were minorities, he added.
The school intends to use the incident as a springboard to take a deeper look at its social culture. Richman plans to develop a schoolwide committee to conduct what he is calling a "diversity audit," to see if the incident is isolated or an indication of a deeper problem, he said.
"I want them to take the pulse of the school," he said. "Are there issues here at the school that are under the surface, and this ignited the concerns? Clearly, these were very hurtful statements."
© 2003 The Durham Herald Company