After a director at a reputed London university used the n-word on a video call, students have demanded for him to be sacked.
“In a meeting with students on Thursday, Adam Habib, director of the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas), used the n-word in reply to concerns that lecturers had used the slur and that complaints from black students had been ignored by the university,” The Times reported.
Students were reportedly “horrified” after Habib used the n-word. A South African of Indian descent told The Times, “The issue around that firstly, on the n*****, somebody making that allegation, then bring it to me. I don’t know the case, this is the first I’ve heard of it.” The director's perception of the word was that he found it acceptable while his students objected to it.
A black student responded to him and said, “You are not a black man. You cannot use that word. . . you do not face the trauma and the oppression of black bodies, what we go through 24/7 for the last 500 years.” A short video on Twitter showed the students saying, “You do not embody our history so therefore you cannot use the word. Many writers. . . have written as to why non-black people of colour and white bodies should not use the n-word. Because when it comes from that perspective, it is a whole different story, from when it comes from our own perspective, which is the autonomy, agency and reclamation of our own history.”
However, the director went on record to apologise and said that in his part of the world, “when someone uses it, the context matters”. Black students have set up a petition for his resignation or dismissal in the next 31 days.
In a Twitter thread, Habib stated that he had apologised and questioned why some were “still politicising the issue. So why don’t I think it was problematic. Because context matters and I was arguing for taking punitive action. You cannot impute maligned intention without understanding context. Do I believe only blacks can verbalize the word? No, I don’t.”
