Hunter professor’s racist hot mic comments ‘offensive and abhorrent’ — but she’s still teaching, CUNY chancellor says
CUNY’s chancellor slammed the “clearly offensive and abhorrent” hot mic comments Hunter professor Allyson Friedman made about black students — but said she was still teaching as of Tuesday.
“Obviously, the comments made by the professor are clearly offensive and abhorrent and something that was echoed also by President Cantor from Hunter College,” chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez said.
Friedman, an associate biology professor and a mom, is being investigated by three different committees after she was caught calling black students “too dumb to know they’re in a bad school” during a Community Education Council meeting.
Hunter College, the district and the city Department of Education are each conducting their own investigations into Friedman’s comments, Matos Rodriguez revealed when Assemblywoman Alicia Hyndman (D-Queens) pressed him about the incident during Tuesday’s higher education budget hearing in Albany.
“We look forward to hearing the reports at the end of the investigation, but we are, like you, totally appalled by the comments.”
Matos Rodriguez could not say how long the investigations will take, but admitted it shouldn’t be “lengthy.”
Friedman, however, is permitted to continue teaching at Hunter College as her comments and potential racial biases are probed.
When asked by Hyndman whether she is still in the classroom, Matos Rodriguez simply responded “yes.”
Friedman, an associate biology professor at Hunter College, was forced to apologize after she was busted on a hot mic moment that interrupted a black eighth-grade student’s concerns about the potential shutdown of her Upper West Side school during a public Community Education Council meeting on Feb 10.
“They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school,” Friedman reportedly said on Zoom while her mic was live.
“If you train a black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back,” she continued. “You don’t have to tell them anymore.”
Friedman claimed she wasn’t being racist, but was trying to explain systematic racism to her own child “by referencing an example of an obviously racist trope” — but her full remarks weren’t completely audible.
The educator has received widespread backlash over the incident and is battling numerous calls for her employment termination.
Friedman has a PhD from NYU and researches and teaches cellular neurophysiology, which explores “the neural adaptations that are responsible for aberrant social behaviors,” according to her bio.
