U.S. college professor on leave after asking Vietnamese-American student to 'anglicize' her name
A U.S. college professor has been placed on leave after he asked a Vietnamese student to anglicize her name because it sounded like an “offensive sound” in English, ABC7 News KGO reported.
Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American student at Laney College, based in Oakland, California, told KGO that on her second day of class, she received an email from her trigonometry professor, Matthew Hubbard, asking that she ‘anglicize’ her name.
“Phuc Bui sounds like an insult in English,” Hubbard wrote, according to screenshots of the email shared on social media. Having never heard the term ‘anglicize’ before, Nguyen told KGO that she asked a friend what it meant. Nguyen added that she was used to people finding her name difficult to pronounce but “they would ask (her) how to pronounce (her) name.”
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So I’m disgusted and disappointed. Honestly, I really liked laney college but this teacher had the ignorance and audacity to tell my sister to anglicized her name is disgusting. Anglicized means to make English in form or character. As a professor, he should be trying to learn her name and culture and not try to white wash her name. My sister graduated high school thinking she can finally be able to use her name. But this is fucking disgusting. I really hate cussing on social media but the fact that this white professor had the audacity to ask her to make her name easier is disgusting 🤮🤮🤮🤮. If you read the last page, he’s calling my sister’s name an embarrassment and that it’s sounds like an insult. I love that my parents want to keep my culture alive by keeping our Vietnamese name. If you can’t say it then ask. In addition, Hubbard said that English is his language. But also forgot that my sister also spoke English and that’s not his language.
A post shared by quynh (@diemquyynh) on Jun 18, 2020 at 1:03pm PDT
Hubbard, she said, was “being an ignorant person and not trying to learn my name.” Nguyen responded to Hubbard’s email, stating that she found his request to be “discriminatory” and that she would file a complaint should he not use her given name.
Hubbard responded back, saying that her name sounded like “f*** boy” in English. “If I lived in Vietnam and my name in your language sounded like Eat a D–k I would change it to avoid embarrassment on my part and on part of the people who have to say it.”
“I repeat my request,” he wrote.
Nguyen’s sister posted the email exchange on Instagram on June 19 and since then, the post has been been viewed thousands of times. “My sister graduated high school thinking she can finally be able to use her name,” she wrote in the caption, calling the emails “disgusting.” She also posted a clip of Hubbard’s online class on Zoom, in which Hubbard referred to Phuc Bui as “P Nguyen.”
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Update: he now refers to her as P Nguyen. I wanna know why he can’t just ask my sister how to pronounce her name
A post shared by quynh (@diemquyynh) on Jun 18, 2020 at 3:28pm PDT
“I wanna know why he just can’t ask my sister how to pronounce her name,” she captioned the clip.
After the emails and video clip went viral on social media, Laney College sent a letter to its community stating that they were “aware of the racist and xenophobic messages between a faculty member … and a student about the pronunciation of their name.” The faculty member, they added, has been put on administrative leave pending an investigation.
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Thank you for those who emailed them! In addition, thanks for all your support it means literally so much ❤️❤️❤️❤️
A post shared by quynh (@diemquyynh) on Jun 18, 2020 at 7:41pm PDT
According to KGO , Hubbard posted an apology for his behaviour on Twitter, but later removed his account.
His apology reportedly read: “I apologise 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.”
