"Professor Donald Hermann used the racial epithet while teaching a first-year criminal law class as part of a lesson on provocation and self-defense, students said. He was posing a hypothetical scenario, a standard practice in legal education, when he used the word. esterday in class he discussed the incident in an exchange that grew heated and left some students unsatisfied with his apology. Others, Hermann told Crain's, came to his office to privately express support."

Reports Crain's Chicago Business.

To my heart, the saddest part of the story is that the students who supported him only offered their support privately.

"He could not fathom why he couldn't say it," said Carli Wright, one of the students who filed the complaint.

But using the actual slur, Hermann explained, illustrates just how much provocation the courts require before they view a provocateur as an aggressor. "The meaning wouldn't convey the same way if I said it was 'a racial slur' or even if I said it was 'an African-American racial slur.' It's part of the contemporary situation . . . and the need to take into consideration these special sensitivities," Hermann said in an interview. Yet in criminal law, students are training to become prosecutors, public defenders and private defense attorneys. "If this word interferes with their functioning, being a lawyer is probably not a thing they should be doing."

Hermann, who said he's been teaching law since 1972, added that he regrets causing personal hurt and is open to using alternative language.....

When Hermann used the N-word in class last week, Nikki Childers felt her classmates' eyes swivel toward her. "I was posed with the question: Do I become the stereotypically angry black woman, which is what they expect me to be?" she said. "It was like, damned if I do, damned if I don't. This is a fighting word, and I now have to fight you. I don't have a choice."

You certainly have a choice about how to fight. You don't have to file a complaint against the teacher. You can engage him in debate and try to persuade him to change. He's saying he's open to using another approach. And I understand the problem you have with his use of a method that entails deliberately offending you. He's trying to get studentsto understand a legal doctrine, but there is a problem with imposing more of a burden on the students who are in the traditionally burdened group and are also the minority in the classroom. And yet by filing a complaint, you give him the (dubious) honor of victimhood. I don't think that's the most effective way to get what you want.

But I do strongly agree with you that a professor should not be using the "n-word" — especially in a hypothetical as opposed to an actual case. And I really don't like hearing a law professor tell first-year students that if they don't like it they might not have what it takes to be a lawyer. It's terrible to aim that message at the minority students, and it's not even true. There are many different kinds of jobs for lawyers, and you can find a path that fits you. It's so easy to think — when you're one year into it — that lawyers are awful people and I don't belong here. A law professor should not exacerbate that feeling!