![]() While the change was presumably applauded by those students who urged action against Patton, his effective suspension from teaching the course angered many other students and alumni. Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students, and for that I am deeply sorry.” Patton “repeated several times a Chinese word that sounds very similar to a vile racial slur in English. “It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students,” Garrett wrote. Several days later, Garrett, dean of the business school, sent students an email saying that Patton was being replaced as instructor of the course, effective immediately. We should not be made to fight for our sense of peace and mental well-being at Marshall.” ![]() Less than a week into their graduate school journey, the students added, “were made to feel less than … We are burdened to fight with our existence in society, in the workplace, and in America. The word is most commonly used with a pause in between both syllables.” They also said they’d reached out to fellow Chinese students, who “confirmed that the pronunciation of this word is much different than what Professor Patton described in class. The students said some of them had voiced their concern to Patton during his lecture, but that he’d used the word in following class sections anyway. The negligence and disregard displayed by our professor was very clear in today’s class.” “There are over 10,000 characters in the Chinese written language and to use this phrase, a clear synonym with this derogatory N-Word term, is hurtful and unacceptable to our USC Marshall community. “The way we heard it in class was indicative of a much more hurtful word with tremendous implications for the Black community,” wrote the students, who identified themselves as Black M.B.A. So they wrote a letter to the dean of the Marshall School of Business, Geoffrey Garrett, among others, describing Patton as insensitive and incapable of teaching the three-week intensive communications course. ![]() And some or all of the Black students across three sections of the course were offended by what they’d heard. Patton, who has worked in China but is not a scholar of Chinese, did not warn students that 那个, or ne ga, (alternatively spelled nà ge and nèige) sounds something like the N-word - which it does. “In China,” for instance, he continued, “the common pause word is ‘that that that.’ So in China it might be ne ga, ne ga, ne ga.” “Taking a break between ideas can help bring the audience in,” Patton said, according to a recording of one of the Zoom course sections and a transcription that appeared next to him on screen. Late last month, Greg Patton, the professor, was teaching a lesson on “filler words” in other languages - think “err,” “um” or “like” in English - in his master’s-level course on communication for management. In a controversial decision, the University of Southern California replaced a professor of business communication with another instructor in one of his classes for saying a Chinese word that sounds like an English slur.
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