The video in question was a parody of a 2004 film, “Downfall.” According to IMDB, the film tells of Hitler’s final days in his Berlin bunker at the end of World War II. She acknowledged that the parody video included the dialogue: “Don’t you dare finish that sentence or I’ll send you to a chamber. And it won’t be the chamber of commerce. I can guarantee that.” Nazis used gas chambers to kill millions of Jewish people during World War II.
The incident was first reported by The Massachusetts Daily Collegian, a student-run publication.
Lowry said she has a bank of about 700 student videos from past courses and that the video that caused the controversy is about 10 years old and had been shown in previous classes. This time, it was shown at a Nov. 12 class that focused on inventory cost methods. Lowry said the class had five minutes left, and, after some students requested a video, she showed it.
Shortly thereafter, the chair of her department called her to say someone complained about it, she said. On Nov. 18, she was pulled from the Accounting 221 class where the video was shown. The course’s semester ended on Dec. 11. She has since apologized to students in an e-mail and indicated she would not be showing the video again.
“I was crushed,” she said of learning someone was offended by the video. “That wasn’t my intent.”
Lowry said she prides herself on being an instructor that engages with students, a teacher who finds “ways to resonate with them.” She said she has pushed for diversity and inclusiveness in academic and student groups.
“I’ve never had a complaint until this,” she said.
Ed Blaguszewski, a UMass Amherst spokesman, said in a statement the decision to remove her from the class was made “by the Isenberg School of Management after it concluded that objectively offensive material had been presented to students.”
A senior lecturer at the school, Lowry is still teaching an online intro to accounting class at the university and a master’s course on ethics, while UMass conducts a review.
“As we respond to any incident, we are guided by University policy, collective bargaining agreements, and any relevant laws or regulations as they pertain to the particular situation,” Blaguszewski said. ”As with all personnel matters, we are not at liberty to disclose details of any particular case but remain confident in the fairness of our process.”
Blaguszewski said the university “takes personnel matters and any complaints from faculty, staff, and/or students very seriously.”
The Collegian reported that another video in the course, a parody of the hip-hop song “Thotiana” was also shown to students during the fall semester that recently ended, but has since been pulled offline. That outlet quoted one student speculating that the video could have been interpreted as derogatory toward women and another student told the publication it was “not appropriate.” Lowry said this week she was never made aware of any of her students complaining about that video.
Amid the university investigation, Eve Weinbaum, president of Massachusetts Society of Professors, the union that represents Lowry and about 1,600 other professors and librarians at UMass Amherst, is criticizing the school’s handling of the matter, saying the “initial response was not helpful for education.”
“We’re hoping that moving forward, they do the right thing,” she said.
Asked whether there was fear Lowry would be fired, Weinbaum replied, “The union is going to absolutely make sure that that does not happen.”
Weinbaum, a professor of sociology and labor studies at UMass, said the complaint regarding the video was anonymous and noted the union is asking: “Why don’t we have a conversation about this?”
“This is a research university, the whole point is to have conversations about topics, whether difficult or controversial,” she said. “The educational opportunity was lost. Cathy didn’t have the opportunity to talk to anyone who was upset. This is a real missed opportunity.”
The decision to pull Lowry from the class came weeks after several swastikas were found drawn in chalk on the walls of the university’s Fine Arts Center on Oct. 30.
Weinbaum said the union does not want to downplay the concerns of students.
“We just hope the university would respond as swiftly and strongly when there is real hate speech going on as they did to a four-minute video in an accounting class,” she said.
The union is hopeful Lowry will be teaching the course in the classroom during the spring semester.
The controversy has drawn the attention of a free expression advocacy group.
Jonathan Friedman, PEN America’s campus free speech project director, said in a statement last week that “Punishing a professor for sharing satirical videos created by students, even offensive ones, would be flat wrong.”
He said the incident represented a “teaching opportunity rather than grounds for an investigation.”
“If professors can face disciplinary action for circulating student-made projects, that can have a chilling effect on how students and faculty engage in the learning process,” he said.
Danny McDonald can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @Danny__McDonald.
