Queen’s University professors are demanding an apology from the university for false accusations of racism and sexism leveled against Michael Mason, a former history professor at the university.
Mason, who had been teaching for almost 50 years, was “banned” from the second-year history course on imperialism and neo-colonialism, following accusations from students and teaching assistants that he was making racist and sexist statements in his lectures.
Students said that he had used the terms “rag head,” “towel head,” “japs,” and “little yellow sons of bitches,” and one of Mason’s female teaching assistants accused him of telling the female TAs that they should become “mistresses.”
Mason defended himself saying that he was using the offensive phrases to demonstrate the attitudes of the era that they were studying. He added that some of his statements were direct quotes from contemporaneous documents. Mason said that he had simply expressed the hope that his students would become “masters and mistresses” of the material by the end of the semester.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers published a report in which the said that Queen’s had “acted callously and irresponsibly.”
Sources: The Globe and Mail
