Keon urged to step down after mocking comments
Petitions circulate seeking the ouster of PNW chancellor
Calls for Purdue University Northwest Chancellor Thomas Keon to resign after he made a racist remark during the school’s Dec. 10 graduation ceremony are gaining momentum, with at least two petitions circulating that urge his resignation.
One petition, created by “A Concerned PNW student,” captured 1,690 signatures by Friday’s deadline and asked the campus “to look at what he said and deeply recognize what effect this will have on the diverse communities at Purdue Northwest.”
A second petition, posted and co-signed Dec. 15 by a group of Asian academics across the country, said Keon’s apology for the remark doesn’t address their community’s concerns. Keon came under fire Wednesday after video of him pretending to speak a made-up language that sounded Chinese went viral on social media. “Although Chancellor Keon issued an apology, which was accepted by the Board of Trustees, it is clear from his statement that he does not understand the impact that his racist behavior had and is having on Asians and Asian-Americans, who are already experiencing and coping with heightened levels of anti-Asian hate since the start of the Covid19 pandemic,” the petition reads.
“Racism directed toward Asians and Asian Americans in the United States has a long, violent history that dates back to the 1800s and continues to impact the safety and health of this growing and heterogeneous population.”
Tiffany Yip, a psychology professor at Fordham University in Bronx, New York, and one of that petition’s authors, said she saw the video after a longtime friend and colleague, Rich Lee, sent it to her. She had to watch it twice to make sure she saw what she thought she saw.
“I don’t do social media, but he sent it to me, and I watched it the first time and thought, ‘What did I just see?’ So I watched it again, paused it and thought, ‘OK, that’s exactly what I thought,’ ” Yip said Friday.
“My first reaction was anger, thinking about the students, their friends and family there to celebrate the achievements of these young people, and to have that come out of nowhere was just disappointing.
“I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not.”
Lee, a professor of psychology with the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and petition author, said a former PNW instructor who was an undergraduate student of his posted the video; his own repost of it went viral on Twitter. He said he believes Keon chose to go with an Asian accent because Asian and Asian Americans aren’t seen the same as other minorities.
“I don’t think it was a mistake,” Lee said. “It wouldn’t have been OK for him to use an African-American dialect, would it? Or Native American? People don’t see us as oppressed, so we’re often targets of widespread ridicule.
“And we know this because of (former President Donald) Trump, who repeatedly mocked Asians and created the coronavirus nicknames ‘China flu’ and ‘Kung flu.’ It was an abuse of power to use (the commencement) stage to send the message that (making fun of the Asian community) is acceptable.”
A former PNW instructor, who asked their name not be used in order to speak freely, said a former PNW student of theirs sent them the link to the video. They too weren’t surprised at Keon’s actions and said they left PNW because the actual campus culture doesn’t match its claims of inclusivity, among other issues.
“They’re not sincere about it, and they didn’t support initiatives that would push social justice causes to the forefront,” the former instructor said. “It’s just not a priority for them.”
The former instructor added that former students still on campus who are involved in various programs have been told they need to be “cautious” when talking about the incident.
“There was a meeting shortly before I left where the chancellor was asked about declining enrollment and how PNW and (Indiana University Northwest) were competing for the same students,” the former instructor said. “(Keon) said, ‘Well, one of us will cease to exist,’ and didn’t say which one. With his actions Saturday and the enrollment issues PNW has, I guess we know which one he meant.”
While PNW boasted a recent 12% increase in enrollment, its enrollment dashboard tells a different tale. Between 2016 and the 2022-2023 school year, PNW’s enrollment across in-person, online and high school students taking college courses decreased to 8,911 from 15,286.
The heaviest of those declines didn’t come during the pandemic, but between 2016-2017 and 2017-2018, when enrollment decreased by 21%; and between 20172018 and 2018-2019, when it lost another 13%.
Enrollment during the pandemic, meanwhile, still fell, but not to the previous degree, the dashboard indicates. Both Yip and Lee, as well as other colleagues, were outraged at the response from Purdue’s main campus in West Lafayette. Campus spokesman Tim Doty said on Wednesday that “The Purdue University Board of Trustees, which oversees all campuses in the Purdue system, is aware of the comments made by Chancellor Keon during December 2022 commencement at Purdue Northwest and has accepted his apology.”
Additionally, PNW spokeswoman Kris Falzone told trade magazine Chronicle of Higher Education that “Chancellor Keon was reacting to something that the speaker had said, and it was taken out of context” and encouraged people to watch the video. Neither Doty nor Falzone responded by deadline for further comment.
Keon apologized for the comment Dec. 14, seemingly after the video got traction. His comment was an off-the-cuff response after commencement keynote speaker Jim Dedelow finished his speech, where he talked about a made-up language he created to entertain his new granddaughter and at one point used it to calm the baby from the stage when she squawked during his speech.
As Dedelow sat down, Keon came back to the podium and said, “Well, all I can say is” and proceeded to speak in a made-up language that sounded as if he were trying to speak Chinese. He then said, “That’s sort of my Asian version of his …” trailing off before going back on-script.
In a letter on Purdue Northwest’s website dated Dec. 14, Keon apologized for making a comment that was “offensive and insensitive.”