He Was Punished For Using Redacted Slurs In A Law Test Question. Now He’s Suing His University For Defamation.

A law professor who was punished for including a question on his exam that included redacted slurs is suing his university for violating his Constitutional rights, defamation, false light, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

University of Illinois-Chicago Law Professor Jason Kilborn saga began in the fall of 2020, when he included on his Civil Procedure II exam in the fall of 2020 a question that included edited references to racial and gender slurs. The question was about a hypothetical case regarding gender and racial employment discrimination, The Daily Wire reported.

At one point, the question discussed allegations from a hypothetical employee regarding her treatment at a hypothetical company, saying this employee quit “after she attended a meeting in which other managers expressed their anger at Plaintiff, calling her a ‘n___’ and ‘b___’ [sic].”

The question caused a backlash from the Black Law Students Association, which claimed Kilborn’s exam question “shocked students and created a huge distraction from taking the exam.” The BLSA circulated a petition demanding Kilborn be removed as chair of the academic affairs committee “and from all other committee appointments he holds.” The petition was sent to dean Darby Dickerson and Chancellor Michael Amiridis.

Kilborn met with a member of the BLSA for a conversation on Zoom after the petition was created. During that conversation, the BLSA member asked the professor when Dickerson hadn’t given the “attack letter” to him. Kilborn allegedly speculated, in jest: “I suspect she’s afraid if I saw the horrible things said about me in that letter I would become homicidal.”

The BLSA member reported this comment to the school’s Behavioral Threat Assessment team, and Kilborn was placed on indefinite leave.

Kilborn, however, believed his suspension was due to the exam question, and even said he was “actively misled into believing my suspension was related to that language,” according to Northwestern University Law Professor Andrew Koppelman, who reported on the story for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Kilborn filed his lawsuit in late January. At the time, The Daily Wire reported that he had undergone anti-racism training – that included the same redacted slur Kilborn used in his test question that started the whole situation. This training requirement came after UIC reneged on an agreement it had made with Kilborn in July 2021 that would require the professor to let the dean know before he responded to any racial issues in his class. He also agreed to audio-record his classes. UIC reneged after the BLSA and Jesse Jackson complained.

The College Fix reported that Kilborn’s lawsuit accuses his employers of “publicly accus[ing] him of calling students of color ‘cockroaches.’” A transcript of the relevant segment of the discussion shows no such thing:

The fact that other plaintiffs see that one other plaintiff lost isn’t a disincentive. If it were, frivolous litigation would have ended long ago, because lots of plaintiffs have been pushed to the wall and lost. You don’t hear about those stories in the media. You hear about idiot people winning $1 million verdict against Subway for having 11.5”-long sandwiches. That’s what makes the press, right, that Subway lost. Not that they win against this ridiculously frivolous case. That wasn’t in the media, only in the legal media, maybe, if you were paying attention. And that’s the problem. If they win, no one hears about this. They only hear about it if they lose, and God forbid that, then all the cockroaches come out of the walls, they’re thinking, right?

The lawsuit also says the school falsely claimed Kilborn “interfered with Black students’ participation in the University’s academic program and therefore constituted harassing conduct” because of his exam question and his response to criticism of that question. Kilborn’s lawsuit says he never interfered with Black students’ education.

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