Professor Asks Student To Anglicize Her Name Because ‘It Sounds Like An Insult In English’, Gets Suspended Instead
Having a name that’s difficult to pronounce in English has its challenges. It means a lot of awkward mispronunciations, nicknames, and hurried apologies. Trust me, I know. However, just because somebody has a foreign name is no reason to ask them to change it.
Vietnamese student Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen says she became the victim of discrimination when a professor from Laney College in Oakland, California told her to “Anglicize” her name. The reason? Mathematics professor Matthew Hubbard believed that freshman Phuc Bui’s name sounded like an insult in English—‘f*** boy.’
The student’s sister shared the email exchange that happened between her and the professor on Instagram and it went viral. According to The New York Times, professor Hubbard was put on leave soon after the emails were made public.
A math professor from Laney College in Oakland, California, was suspended after he asked a Vietnamese student to “Anglicize” her name
Image credits: diemquyynh
Image credits: diemquyynh
Image credits: diemquyynh
The student’s sister made the emails sent by the professor public on her Instagram account
Image credits: diemquyynh
Image credits: diemquyynh
View this post on Instagram
Image credits: diemquyynh
The community college released an official statement
Image credits: diemquyynh
The first email exchange between Hubbard and Phuc Bui happened on Wednesday, June 17. Phuc Bui explicitly told her math professor that she would file a complaint with the community college’s Title IX office if he couldn’t call her by her real name.
President of Laney College, Tammeil Gilkerson, called the incident “disturbing” in a statement released on Thursday. According to her, the professor was placed on administrative leave while an investigation is being conducted.
“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,” Gilkerson said.
Laney College has a large Asian student population. 16k students study at this Oakland community college and 29 percent of them are of Asian descent.
Phuc Bui said in a Zoom interview with KGO-TV on Friday that she used to go by her nickname—May. However, after years and years of using this nickname, she wanted to use her real name which means “happiness blessing.” She added that when she had been unaware of what the word “Anglicize” meant until she asked her friend what it meant after she received the email from her professor.
The professor apologized on Saturday
On Saturday, Hubbard apologized on his Twitter account which has since been deleted. “I apologize for my insensitive actions which caused pain and anger to my student, and which have now caused pain and anger to an untold number of people who read my two inappropriate emails on the Internet,” he wrote in his apology.
He admitted to The New York Times that sending out those emails was a mistake and added that there were two people in his online trigonometry class with the last name Nguyen. Since the other person with the same surname changed their online name, Hubbard said that he thought he’d ask Phuc Bui to do the same.
“The first email was a mistake, and I made it thinking about another student willing to Anglicize. But it’s a big difference with someone doing it voluntarily and asking someone to do it. The second email is very offensive, and if I had waited eight hours, I would’ve written something very different,” he said.
Here’s how people reacted to the incident
Some people said that the professor had a point, even though he handled things very, very badly
I would have asked the student what they prefer to be called as they have four names- if we had a middle name on the class register, our teachers would not refer to us by our whole name. If I was unfamiliar with the name, I would ask them to pronounce it- I have a huge PET PEEVE about names being mis-pronounced.
I have the same pet peeve. When I meet someone with a name that can be pronounced multiple ways (like mine /less lee/ vs lez lee/) or a name I've never heard, I ask them to pronounce it as I write it down phonetically! To tell the student to pick a new name without even knowing the correct pronunciation is just really lazy AND rude.
We live in an international world, so it should be rather normal to ask somebody how the name is pronounced. A French colleague is called Aglae (A - Gla - E). She is called by some people Algue or even Ugly...
My friend's name is Welsh -- Aneurin, pronounced "an-EYE-run." He goes by "Annie" and when people respond like idiots, he tells them his name and they usually get over themselves.
My name is mispronounced even in my country, and it is not hard to pronounce it in Romanian. I have to shorten it, so people do not call me other totally different names, so I either go with Mira or with Donna (for my English speaking friends).
I wonder if Laney ever has in-service training for instructors. This seems like the kind of thing that would/should be covered in a diversity/cultural sensitivity class. If not, it sounds like they REALLY need to implement something. I mean, lots of corporations have classes like these for employees. Not universities? And I'm not talking about quashing feee speech, just providing instructors with tools for dealing with a challenge like student-has-a-weird-name. They probably have to take sexual harassment training, right? I truly hope that Laney will work with Hubbard (and other instructors) to educate and implement best practices rather than firing him. His apology seemed legit to me, so maybe he'd be open to a training. It's much more helpful to open the discussion in a situation like this, and come to a greater understanding than to can anyone who seems clueless. If someone REFUSES to learn a different way, then fire their ass! Why am I feeling like I'm going to get downvotes for this?
Not from me - totally agree with you.
Thank you for your support! 😁
I would have asked the student what they prefer to be called as they have four names- if we had a middle name on the class register, our teachers would not refer to us by our whole name. If I was unfamiliar with the name, I would ask them to pronounce it- I have a huge PET PEEVE about names being mis-pronounced.
I have the same pet peeve. When I meet someone with a name that can be pronounced multiple ways (like mine /less lee/ vs lez lee/) or a name I've never heard, I ask them to pronounce it as I write it down phonetically! To tell the student to pick a new name without even knowing the correct pronunciation is just really lazy AND rude.
We live in an international world, so it should be rather normal to ask somebody how the name is pronounced. A French colleague is called Aglae (A - Gla - E). She is called by some people Algue or even Ugly...
My friend's name is Welsh -- Aneurin, pronounced "an-EYE-run." He goes by "Annie" and when people respond like idiots, he tells them his name and they usually get over themselves.
My name is mispronounced even in my country, and it is not hard to pronounce it in Romanian. I have to shorten it, so people do not call me other totally different names, so I either go with Mira or with Donna (for my English speaking friends).
I wonder if Laney ever has in-service training for instructors. This seems like the kind of thing that would/should be covered in a diversity/cultural sensitivity class. If not, it sounds like they REALLY need to implement something. I mean, lots of corporations have classes like these for employees. Not universities? And I'm not talking about quashing feee speech, just providing instructors with tools for dealing with a challenge like student-has-a-weird-name. They probably have to take sexual harassment training, right? I truly hope that Laney will work with Hubbard (and other instructors) to educate and implement best practices rather than firing him. His apology seemed legit to me, so maybe he'd be open to a training. It's much more helpful to open the discussion in a situation like this, and come to a greater understanding than to can anyone who seems clueless. If someone REFUSES to learn a different way, then fire their ass! Why am I feeling like I'm going to get downvotes for this?
Not from me - totally agree with you.
Thank you for your support! 😁