Georgetown Law Professor Fired After Complaining About Black Students on Zoom

Georgetown Law professor Sandra Sellers was fired after she complained about the performance of Black students in what she thought was a private Zoom call.

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Georgetown Law professor Sandra Sellers was fired after she complained about the performance of Black students in a Zoom call with another professor, NBC News reports.

“You know what? I hate to say this, I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks, happens almost every semester,” Sellers can be heard saying in a clip that circulated on social media this week. “It happens almost every semester, and it’s like, oh, come on. You know, we get some really good ones but there also usually are some of them that are just plain at the bottom. It drives me crazy.”

Sellers, who was speaking with another faculty member, David Batson, believed it was a private conversation. The Georgetown Black Law Students Association said that Sellers was talking about the only Black student in her class, and the organization called on her to resign. Batson is also being called upon to share a public apology for his “failure to adequately condemn” what Sellers said in the call.

“We demand nothing short of the immediate termination of Sandra Sellers as adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Not suspension. Not an investigation,” reads the BLSA statement. “The University must take swift and definitive action in the face of blatant and shameless racism.

In a letter sent on Wednesday, Georgetown Law Dean Bill Treanor called Sellers’ comments “reprehensible,” and added, “We are responding with the utmost seriousness to this situation.” He later terminated per TMZ, saying she “is no longer affiliated with Georgetown Law.”

This comes after the University’s Institutional Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action Office opened an investigation into the incident. 

A petition was also launched calling for her resignation, an audit of past grades and student evaluations, and a commitment to hiring more Black professors at the school.

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