Laney College professor put on leave after allegedly asking student to ’Anglicize’ her name

OAKLAND — Laney College’s president confirmed that the school has placed a faculty member on administrative leave after a social-media post alleged that the faculty member had asked a Vietnamese-American student to “Anglicize” her name for his personal comfort.

The college’s student body of more than 16,000 is about 29 percent Asian-American. In a statement, President Tammeil Gilkerson said that an unnamed faculty member had been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation as soon as campus leaders learned of the racist comments.

“On the surface this incident is obviously disturbing and comes after decades of discussing and working to combat structural racism, xenophobia, and violence in both the Black and Asian Pacific Islander community,” Gilkerson said in a statement. “While our mission has been bold and unrelenting, we also recognize that our college and its community is a reflection of broader society and we must actively fight ignorance with education. We do not tolerate racism, discrimination or oppression of any kind.”

A post on Instagram contains screenshots of emails alleged to be sent from a Laney faculty member to a student and a video of the professor during a video conference. In the emails, the faculty member says that the student’s name, which is Vietnamese, sounds like a common English vulgarity and asks her to “Anglicize” it.

The student declines in response, saying that the request “feels discriminatory” and that she will forward a complaint to the school’s Title IX office, in charge of investigating discrimination, “if you can not refer to me by my given birth name.”

In a follow-up email, the faculty member explicitly states the vulgarity he claims her name resembles, and tells her that though he understands she is offended, “you need to understand your name is an offensive sound in my language,” telling her that “If I lived in Vietnam and my name in your language sounded like (vulgarity), I would change it to avoid embarrassment both on my part and on the part of the people who say it.”

In the attached video, a person, presumably the faculty member, refers to a student by an abbreviated name, seemingly avoiding pronouncing the student’s correct name.

The woman who made the post, who identified herself as the student’s sister, wrote that she was “disgusted” and “disappointed.”

“As a professor, he should be trying to learn her name and culture and not try to white wash her name,” she said. “My sister graduated high school thinking she can finally be able to use her name. He’s calling my sister’s name an embarrassment and that it’s sounds like an insult. I love that my parents want to keep my culture alive by keeping our Vietnamese name. If you can’t say it then ask.”