Gordon Klein, UCLA

Summary

Gordon Klein is a lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles’s Anderson School of Business. On June 2, 2020, a student emailed Klein asking him to adjust his final exam requirements for Black students due to the civil unrest following George Floyd’s murder. Klein declined to change the final exam procedures, citing the difficulty of identifying which students would be granted accommodations in a course conducted entirely online due to COVID-19.

Later that day, a Change.org petition calling for the firing of Klein went viral on Twitter, where it garnered over 20,000 signatures. The dean of the Anderson School spoke with Klein, who shared the full text of the email exchange. Klein also showed the dean a June 1 message from Klein’s supervisor directing instructors to change final exam procedures based only on standard university policy on accommodations for illness, family emergency, religious observances, or other similar events.

UCLA placed Klein on mandatory leave effective June 3, apparently due to the tone of his response to the student. In an email to the UCLA community on June 4, the dean of the Anderson School characterized Klein as having a “disregard for our core principles” and called Klein’s email an “abuse of power.”

The investigation against Klein was formally concluded on July 22, 2020, and in September Klein confirmed to Inside Higher Ed that he had been reinstated.