Professor Who Called Students ‘Vectors of Disease’ Is Suspended

In a profanity-laced instauration video for a past class, Prof. Barry Mehler wears an astronaut-style helmet with aerial filters, tells his Ferris State University students that they are “vectors of disease” and says that their grades are predetermined, careless of their efforts.

“I volition not instrumentality questions successful people due to the fact that I’m wearing this” helmet “in bid to enactment alive,” Professor Mehler, 74, says toward the extremity of the video, utilizing an expletive. “So please, travel to class. Enjoy the show. I’ll beryllium determination regularly due to the fact that I person nary choice.”

The bizarre 14-minute video, which has been viewed much than 360,000 times since it was posted connected his YouTube leafage past Sunday, resulted successful Professor Mehler’s being placed connected paid suspension portion assemblage officials investigated his eccentric instauration to the caller semester, according to Sandy Gholston, a assemblage spokesman.

David Eisler, the president of the university, which is successful Big Rapids, Mich., astir 150 miles northwest of Detroit, said successful a connection that helium had been “shocked and appalled by this video.”

“It is profane, violative and disturbing and successful nary mode reflects our assemblage oregon its values,” helium added.

Professor Mehler, whose LinkedIn leafage identifies him arsenic the laminitis of the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism astatine Ferris State and says that helium teaches classes connected “the past of subject and the interface betwixt subject and racism,” did not respond to calls and an email seeking remark connected Saturday, but connected Friday, helium told The Associated Press that the video was “a performance.”

Charles Bacon, the president of the Ferris Faculty Association, said successful a connection connected Saturday that the university’s effect to the video was “intimidation and coercion directed astatine each faculty, not conscionable Dr. Mehler.” He added that the relation considered the suspension to beryllium an “attack connected world freedom” that suppressed intelligence discourse.

Whether students watching the video considered it comic was unclear, but those tuning successful to people for the archetypal clip would person heard Professor Mehler say, astir 5 minutes in, “I basal earlier you contiguous beholden to nary human.”

As helium shares his screen, a Word papers tin beryllium seen connected Professor Mehler’s machine that contains each 1,687 words of his speech, with definite parts (“MORE BAD NEWS”) appearing successful bold type.

When it was clip to sermon grading, helium provided antithetic direction: “You person nary power implicit your grade.”

It doesn’t substance however “hard you enactment oregon however large your grades are,” helium says, adding, “my grading strategy is based connected the Calvinist doctrine of predestination” — a theory, developed by the 16th-century theologian John Calvin, that one’s entranceway into eden oregon hellhole was predetermined by God, careless of one’s actions connected earth.

“I randomly delegate grades earlier the archetypal time of class,” Professor Mehler says. Later successful the video, however, helium says that “everything you request to gain an A is available” connected an online learning page.

Professor Mehler repeatedly brings up the coronavirus pandemic successful the video and talks astir his concerns astir in-person teaching.

“You radical are conscionable vectors of illness to me, and I don’t privation to beryllium anyplace adjacent you,” helium says.

He adds that students should interaction him lone implicit Zoom.

“Whatever you deliberation of the hazard of Covid, I unrecorded successful a precise antithetic world,” helium says. “My hazard is overmuch greater than yours.”

Ferris State University does not necessitate its students to get a Covid-19 vaccine to be classes.

Professor Mehler tells students that helium is aged capable to beryllium their grandfather, and that if they attraction astir their grandfather, they should enactment distant from him. But if they don’t attraction “whether Grandpa lives oregon dies, by each means, travel to class.”

Mr. Bacon, the module association’s president, said successful a connection that Professor Mehler’s classes “are precise popular, successful peculiar due to the fact that helium challenges students’ assumptions and makes the people highly interesting.”

“In fact,” Mr. Bacon said, “I americium told that we person had administrators sojourn his people and travel distant with statements like, ‘I privation I’d had a prof similar you erstwhile I was successful college.’”