Evidence Emerges Of UCLA Communication Chair’s Bias Against Conservative Professor
More evidence has emerged showing the UCLA Communication Department chair’s bias against a conservative professor on campus.
The department chair, Kerri Johnson, has been accused of blocking students from enrolling in continuing lecturer Keith Fink’s classes in which he taught students about their rights on campus. Johnson has maintained that the cap limit of 200 students for Fink’s classes has remained at that threshold “for several years” and it’s not subject to change.
However, UCLA student Jennifer Gittess provided evidence at The Rival showing that Johnson’s defense is false. Gittess revealed an email exchange between Fink and then-Communications Department chair Tim Groeling in January 2016 showing Fink requesting his class size to be at 250 students. Groeling responded that as long Fink’s teacher’s aide, Andrew Litt, was able to handle the workload of that many students, then “I’m ok with the larger class.”
Gittess also noted that data of previous cap sizes “have mysteriously gone missing.”
“If the data had truly vanished, UCLA’s enrollment management system is surely robust enough to maintain logs documenting each change made to a course,” wrote Gittess. “The Department regularly relies on this feature to evaluate student claims that they were previously enrolled in a class that was subsequently dropped. Whether this data was deliberately erased or accidentally deleted by mere happenstance is an open question for readers to decide.”
She also pointed out that the Communication Studies 150 class currently has enrolled 10 students beyond its limit, which it makes odd that Johnson isn’t honoring permission-to-enroll (PTE) requests for students to take part in Fink’s class.
A spokesman for Johnson told Gittess in an email that “with only one teaching assistant in a class of 200 students, expanding class size was not possible.” But Gittess didn’t buy it.
“How was it possible to have 250 students with one TA last year but only 200 students this year?” Gittess wrote.
The Daily Wire has previously reported that UCLA may be attempting to relieve Fink from his duties as a continuing lecturer through the Excellence Review process in which faculty members vote on whether Fink “meets the necessary excellence standards to continue teaching at the university.” Here is an important update on the matter:
A source close to the situation told The Daily Wire that Keith Fink’s Excellence Review vote will take place on Thursday. It is believed that the panel will consist of eight or nine faculty members, two of whom – Greg Bryant and Kerri Johnson – were on Fink’s bias list, meaning that there are already two probable votes against Fink keeping his position as continuing lecturer. All it takes is a majority vote against Fink for him to be relieved of his duties.
Given this new evidence of Johnson’s bias against Fink, it’s hard to believe that Johnson would vote in favor of Fink keeping his position as continuing lecturer.
