Laney College professor put on leave after demanding student named 'Phuc Bui' 'anglicize' her name
Matthew Hubbard, a mathematics professor at Oakland's Laney College, has been placed on administrative leave after emailing a Vietnamese student and instructing her to "anglicize" her name against her wishes.
A series of emails between the professor and student shared on social media reveals that Hubbard reached out to a student named Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen, and wrote, "Could you Anglicize your name. Phuc Bui sounds like an insult in English."
In a response, Nguyen stated Hubbard's request "feels discriminatory" and warned the professor she would file a complaint if he refuses to refer to her by her given birth name. Despite the student's warning, Hubbard doubled down and repeated the request.
"Your name in English sounds like F— Boy," he wrote back. "If I lived in Vietnam and my name in your language sounded like Eat a D—, I would change it to avoid embarrassment both on my part and on the part of the people who had to say it. I understand you are offended, but you need to understand your name is an offensive sound in my language. I repeat my request."
The email chain went viral, and Laney College announced Thursday that Hubbard has been placed on administrative leave while the school investigates the incident.
"On the surface this incident is obviously disturbing and comes after decades of discussing and working to combat structural racism, xenophobia, and violence in both the Black and Asian Pacific Islander community," the college wrote in a statement. "While our mission has been bold and unrelenting, we also recognize that our college and its community is a reflection of broader society and we must actively fight ignorance with education. We do not tolerate racism, discrimination or oppression of any kind."
I think the student should sue the college for everything it owns, and then if she wins she could take the proceeds and found her own university, which she could name "Phuc U."
People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
— God@The Tweet of God
Actor Robert Cabal played the part of Hey Soos, one of the drovers on the TV Series Rawhide. It would have been improper to have named the character Jesus in the late '50s and early '60s. Hey Soos is, of course, the Spanish pronunciation of Jesus. The name is spelled Hey Soos in the credits of 115 (out of 217) episodes of the show, which also included some guy named Clint Eastwood.
Did they asked Robert Cabal to Americanize his name? Well, I guess sort of, since he was born as Harold Christopher Ching in Hawaii.
(All thanks to IMDB)
A friend of Doc's, one of only two B-29 bombers still flying.
I recall having a lab TA in college from China whose name was Sho Yo Wang; she honestly didn't understand the (albeit stifled) laughter (this must have been her first year as a TA) when she said her name.Someone apparently clued her in because the following week she said "Call me Lucy". So far as I know, no one made her change it, but she did it willingly. While I agree with the professor that I would change my name if it bore an unfortunate resemblance to an offensive or embarrassing term/phrase of a country I resided in, he was a jerk for insisting on her using a different name, and the girl was well within her rights to refuse (I would have done the same thing in this circumstance). Indeed, other than on an exam, how often does a student's name really come up in a math class? If it really bugged that much, him he could have chosen to call everyone as Mr or Ms and their last name (I wonder what his mother was called when she went to the cupboard).
