UBC professor under investigation, accused of making racist comments

Editor’s note: This article mentions and discusses racist comments.

A UBC professor is reportedly under investigation after students accused them of making racist remarks while instructing.

According to social media posts and videos reportedly shared by UBC students, Dr. John Sherman with UBC’s Department of Chemistry was talking about race and IQ when they made the statements.

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In a clip of the reported lesson, Dr. Sherman is heard saying, “I’ll give you a fact – Black people do poorer on IQ tests than white people.”

“Is that racist? That’s a fact.”

“Is it racist to say it? I don’t know.”

“Asians do better than white people on IQ tests; that’s a fact.”

“Now, you can make judgements from that. Does that mean Asians are smarter than white? White are smarter than Black?”

A discussion regarding the racial comments was posted to the UBC subreddit, where students weighed in on their thoughts about the professor’s comments.

“We are aware of the concerns students have expressed,” said Director of University Affairs Matthew Ramsey in a statement.

“While we cannot comment on the specifics of human resources matters, the university takes matters such as this very seriously and has a variety of measures and policies in place with which to address them.”

The IQ Test, purported to be a measure of intelligence, is not generally used extensively or officially in Canada.

The history of the test itself is steeped in racism. It was often used as evidence of the lesser intelligence of people of colour and immigrants. That’s a fact.