A Florida professor says his contract was terminated for teaching about racial justice

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/18/ [login to see] /florida-professor-fired-racial-justice-woke
Sam Joeckel, a longtime English professor at Palm Beach Atlantic University, says his contract was terminated early after an accusation that his lessons on racial justice were "indoctrinating" students.

For years, Joeckel's class included a unit on the Black experience in the U.S., where he touched on the work of historic figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, as well as long-standing racial disparities in mass incarceration and educational attainment, as WLRN previously reported.

But recently, administrators took issue with Joeckel's curriculum, saying that they received a complaint from a student's parent about his lessons related to race, the professor said. Joeckel's contract was subsequently put under review last month. A few days ago, the instructor learned his contract would be terminated early.

"They did this for a clear reason: my decision to teach and speak about racial justice," he wrote in a statement on Instagram on Thursday.

Palm Beach Atlantic University is a Christian college in West Palm Beach, Fla. As of 2021, nearly 3,700 students were attending the school, either in person or online. White students make up a little over half the student population, while 10% identify as Black and 17% identify as Hispanic.