A sit-in at Seattle University took an unusual turn last week when a student made an allegation to explain why the protest movement was insisting on the firing of a dean: a black student charged that the dean had used the slur "nigger" several times during a discussion they had last year. The charge has appeared in several accounts of a tense meeting between the students and the Reverend Stephen Sundborg, president of the university, who urged the students to abandon their demand for the resignation of Jodi Kelly, dean of the university's Matteo Ricci College, which offers degrees in the humanities. Several accounts state that the word was used by Kelly not to refer to the student or any individual, but to describe the book Nigger, the autobiography of Dick Gregory, the civil rights activist and biographer. On Gregory's own website, he describes what he told his mother about the title of the book: that whenever she heard the name of his work, "you'll know they're advertising my book."

May 16, 2016 ・ From Inside Higher Ed