UPPER WEST SIDE, Manhattan (WABC) — A parent, who works as an associate professor at Hunter College in Manhattan, has been placed on leave amid backlash after she was heard making racist remarks during an education council meeting.<\/p>\n
The school made the announcement on Wednesday in a letter directed to Hunter College community members.<\/p>\n
“I write to share an update about actions that Hunter College is taking as a result of the incident during a recent virtual meeting of the New York City School District 3 Community Education Council in which abhorrent remarks were heard coming from a district parent who also is a Hunter employee. As I shared earlier, we are investigating this matter under the university’s applicable conduct and nondiscrimination policies,” said Hunter College President and Professor of Psychology Nancy Cantor.<\/p>\n
The university said that the parent, and professor, Allyson Friedman, has been placed on leave pending the outcome of the investigation.<\/p>\n
Some critics have called for Friedman to be fired from her job in education.<\/p>\n
The controversial comments were caught on a Community Education Council District 3 video conference call in early February.<\/p>\n
“They’re just too dumb to know they’re in a bad school. I mean, apparently Martin Luther King said it, like if you train a Black person well enough, they’ll know to use the back, you don’t have to tell them anymore,” Friedman could be heard saying in the video.<\/p>\n
“It’s just really defeating to hear that someone thinks that they go to a school that they don’t know is bad and they are too dumb to realize that they’re bad. That’s actually like it’s really bad to hear,” Community Action School MS 258 teacher Lewis St. Victor said.<\/p>\n
Friedman is a district parent who also works as an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Hunter College.<\/p>\n
Following the remarks, the school issued a statement which read in part, “Hunter College is reviewing the situation under the university’s applicable conduct and nondiscrimination policies… we expect our community members’ actions and words to comport with our institutional identity, values, and policies.”<\/p>\n
Friedman put out a statement of her own and claimed her comments were taken out of context after accidentally unmuting her connection.<\/p>\n
“My complete comments make clear these abhorrent views are not my own, nor were they directed at any student or group… However, I recognize these comments caused harm and pain, while that was not my intent I do truly apologize,” Friedman said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The mayor and the schools chancellor called the comments reprehensible.<\/p>\n
“And I think it is indicative of the exact kind of language that makes students feel as if they don’t belong within our public school system,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said.<\/p>\n
Teachers at MS 258 already dealing with the possibility of closure, said the comments are an unwelcome distraction, but also represent a teaching opportunity.<\/p>\n
“We’re living through a moment like this that allows us to reinforce the ideas that we have been communicating, or certainly, I have been communicating as a teacher, throughout my career,” another teacher said.<\/p>\n
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