KABHI ALVIDA NAA KEHNA

Donald,

I understand that Dean ***** is working on setting up a meeting when we might discuss your recent email. In advance of that, I want to be very clear in my overall response to the concerns you raise in your email. First, you obviously are not satisfied with the grades that you received in the class. As I've said, I am happy to sit down with you so that I can explain more fully the reasons for the grades that I assigned. While it is not usually my practice to change grades unless some technical error has occurred, I am certainly willing to listen to your concerns more fully as well. I believe that we can have a reasonable discussion about this.

Regarding, however, the suggestion in your email that students of color may have been treated differently from other students in the class, I have to tell you that I am deeply saddened. I have taught college students for over twenty years, at five institutions in five different states. I have taught large classes and small, almost always with mixes of students from varied backgrounds, interests, cultures, ethnicity, etc. Not once in all those years—until I received your email—has anyone ever suggested that I have treated students of color in any prejudicial way. Not that this situation should be extraordinary—indeed, it should not, it should be the norm for all of us in the academic world. I just want to emphasize, as I mentioned to you earlier, that such uneven treatment would contradict everything I believe in and try to practice in the classroom. I would never knowingly disadvantage a student in any way based on irrelevant factors such as skin color or ethnicity.

Now, having said that, I do believe that perception is a powerful force, and if you or any other students felt at any time something was not right in that classroom, then I take at least some responsibility for that. In a seminar such as we had, the instructor sets the agenda and tone in the classroom, and largely guides the discussion. If you felt that there were patterns of behavior by me, or anyone else for that matter, that were inappropriate, then it would have been my responsibility to address that, and find a way to reverse the practice, or to make sure at the very least that the perception was in line with reality. And this is where I really wish that you, or others, had said something to me at the time. I would have been absolutely ready and willing to work with you on addressing any such issues. Indeed it would have been my responsibility to be responsive in that way. Alas, there is little we can do at this time.

What I do want to do now is to reach out to you, and to any other students with similar concerns, to talk and listen, and to try to understand each other's position better. I believe that open and honest dialogue is the only way to find successful resolution to this type of issue. So I hope you will be willing to listen to my perspective; I am certainly ready to listen to yours.