Thursday, 4:30 PM
Emmanuel elaborates on dismissal
By April Simpson Globe Staff
Emmanuel College on Monday further defended its dismissal of an accounting professor, saying the decision was about the professor’s “insensitivity toward the students who were murdered at Virginia Tech” and had “nothing to do with academic freedom.”
The Catholic liberal arts and sciences college in Boston has drawn publicity around the nation since last Wednesday's dismissal of Nicholas Winset for the adjunct professor's dramatization in class of the Virginia Tech mass shooting.
Winset, who had just begun teaching at Emmanuel this semester, had fought back with an 18-minute video he posted on YouTube.com Saturday evening, saying the college was stifling discussion. In postings on blogs and YouTube site, the college's dismissal of the professor drew mixed reaction.
Initially, the college, which has roughly 1,600 undergraduates, would not provide details surrounding the dismissal. But, in a 300-word statement provided by Emmanuel's spokeswoman yesterday, the college said Winset was dismissed because several witnesses reported that he had violated the college’s standards of conduct and civility. Winset disparaged “the victims as rich white kids combined with an obscene epithet,” according to the statement. “He did not do this as part of an open debate with his students.”
The professor said on his video and in interviews that he pointed a marker at a few students on Wednesday as if it were a gun to dramatize how 23-year-old Seung-Hui Cho shot 32 students and faculty and then himself.
“The last weapon in the empty arsenal of the politically correct is to call someone a bigot, and that’s pretty much what they’re doing here,” Winset said in response to the university's latest statement.
