Professor on leave over China slights

A professor at Syracuse University has been placed on administrative leave for using derogatory language against Chinese.

Although the university did not name the professor in its announcement, social media posted screenshots of a course syllabus belonging to chemistry professor Jon Zubieta that refers to the novel coronavirus as "Wuhan Flu" and "Chinese Communist Party Virus".

The statement, released by Karin Ruhlandt, SU's dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and John Liu, interim vice chancellor and provost, read:

"The derogatory language used by a professor on his course syllabus is damaging to the learning environment for our students and offensive to Chinese, international and Asian-Americans everywhere who have experienced hate speech, rhetoric and actions since the pandemic began.

"The professor has been placed on administrative leave from teaching and removed from the classroom pending the outcome of a full investigation," said the statement.

The decision resulted in varied reactions from the SU community as shown by reader comments on the report on the website of The Daily Orange, the school's independent daily student newspaper.

Some deemed the action a suppression of freedom of speech or PC (politically correct) policing.

But those who supported the university's action pointed out that the use of such language constitutes racism.

"The First Amendment means the government can't arrest you, it doesn't mean there aren't consequences for your actions. There are so many international students from Asia at SU and calling corona a 'Chinese virus' perpetuates racism towards them," wrote one reader, Virginia Weisar.

"Why do people choose to use these words? Because they know what these words mean," said reader Miles Paulson. "They know what they mean to the people they're targeting."

Dr Keiji Fukuda, former assistant director-general for health security at the World Health Organization, while issuing best practices for naming new infectious diseases in 2015, pointed out that connecting a disease with a specific location or category has unintended negative impact by stigmatizing certain communities.

"This may seem like a trivial issue to some, but disease names really do matter to the people who are directly affected. We've seen certain disease names provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities, create unjustified barriers to travel, commerce and trade, and trigger needless slaughtering of food animals," said Fukuda, who is currently director of School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to the coronavirus as the "Chinese virus" or similar terms.

At a June campaign rally in Arizona, Trump referred to it as the "kung flu", a phrase defended by White House counselor Kellyanne Conway at the time even though in March she called the same term "highly offensive".

This year, there have been thousands of incidents in the US involving Asian Americans being verbally and physically assaulted by other groups of people who blame them for the coronavirus due to the fact that the virus was first identified in China.

The Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON) has set up an online reporting mechanism to document coronavirus-related discrimination incidents against Asians since March. In the latest report, released Thursday, 2,583 reports have been recorded as of Aug 5.

Physical assaults made up 9 percent of the incidents. Potential civil rights violations, including workplace discrimination and being barred from establishments and transportation, comprised 8 percent of the incidents.

"I'm a healthcare worker. I saw a mask-less man sit across from me on the subway. I moved to the other side of the train car and he followed. He spat and coughed on the subway while yelling racial slurs. No one stood up for me," reported one respondent in New York.

Another report from Marietta, Georgia, read: "I was in line at the pharmacy when a woman approached me and sprayed Lysol all over me. She was yelling out, 'You're the infection. Go home. We don't want you here!' I was in shock and cried as I left the building. No one came to my help."