Jason Kilborn Part 3: Fucking Duh. Here's What He Really Got In Trouble For In this part, which was FIVE HOURS PLUS of raw audio, I go through the investigation report and several other authoritative documents and we discover what Kilborn actually got in trouble for. I did edit this down a lot, but this monstrosity still turned into two parts so expect the next part very soon! Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
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Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 12.
I'm Thomas.
And that over there is Lydia Smith.
Yes, I am.
Super hottie.
Co-host.
How are you doing?
Hi.
Pretty good.
Excited for this one.
Back and ready to take on the main quest.
Let's do it.
So this is part three.
You should go listen to parts one and two if you happen to hear this out of order.
And now is where we're finally going to get back to Professor Jason Kilbourn.
Take a look at what happened there.
Why don't you refresh us?
What do you remember?
Where are you at?
Stand in for the listener here.
What do you remember about the story so far?
Sure.
Let's see what I remember from the story.
Professor at University of Illinois Chicago teaching law, and he used some racial slurs that were redacted or a racial slur and a gender slur that were redacted for an exam question.
And some students reached out and said they didn't like it.
Then all hell broke loose.
The sky fell down.
Yeah.
And the world started on fire, basically.
Something something Chairman Mao's revolution.
Yes, exactly.
The Red Guard came in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Those missing steps that are kind of crucial.
Yeah.
Right.
Got so many sources.
I've got the video.
I've got his complaint.
They filed suit a little over a year later.
I've got the investigation report that you were cunning enough to track down.
I just...
Once again, a fun little insight into how weird this line of work can be.
So the school issued a post on all that, like once they see that he's a troublemaker and everybody's talking about it because of that, they're like, okay, now we also have to do PR for our fucking internal employment stuff that really shouldn't matter.
It should just be what they're doing.
Anyway.
So they issue kind of a, like a statement.
They summarize the findings, which I'll get to, but they summarize the findings and they're like, here's the investigation report.
We're making it public.
Allegedly because, only because one of the journalists like foiled it.
And so then they decided to make it public.
But the only point of me telling this here is they said, here's the link.
This'll work for students.
If you're not a student, you'll have to make an account with this thing called Box or something.
And I was like, well, I got to get this fucking report.
I Google, I was like, did anybody publish it?
No.
Okay.
And so I make a trial account with this like Dropbox equivalent, but for like colleges or something.
Yeah.
But because it said like, yeah, you can make a guest account, it's totally fine.
It was very much going to charge me, but it was like, oh, seven day free trial.
Cool.
Awesome.
I go through all that, like a ridiculously onerous signup process.
I put in a credit card, I do all that stuff.
And I'm like, I'm just going to get this fucking PDF.
That's all I need.
You cancel right away.
Yeah.
That's all I'm going to do.
I was like specifically doing that.
I click on the link after setting all that up, getting all, it's like verifies my identity a bunch of times, not identity, but like, you know, a bunch of those bullshits where it's like, ah, we sent you an email to make sure you signed into the blah, blah, blah.
Seemingly an hour of this nonsense.
I finally click on the link and it's like, eh, document not around.
It's not available.
Wow.
I don't know if the link expired or something, but all that I was so upset that I couldn't find the investigation report.
I even checked the exhibits of the lawsuit and I didn't find it.
It may be somewhere there.
Some of them aren't available.
So couldn't find it.
And I was telling you, I was like, ah, I just can't find it.
And then you're like, oh, here, I found it.
It's like, I think I tracked down what happened, which is, I think the thing you found it in was a case analysis.
And the link said, a case analysis of Kilborn v whatever done by Jay Kilborn.
And I was like, oh, okay.
Well, that's just him writing about his own thing.
And so I kind of dismissed it as like, I didn't want to get his own analysis.
And maybe I misread it, but I was like, I don't need to look at that.
But that's where you found the link to a drive that had these documents, which is pretty key.
Anyway, all that is to say, we've got the full investigation report, which is very valuable.
I've got a lot of notes on that.
We've got the response by the schools.
So we've got the motion to dismiss.
We've got a couple motions to dismiss because there's two rounds of it and stuff like that.
And we've got a decision on a motion to dismiss by the court.
And that's a good one because that usually You know, they usually restate the facts as well.
And it's not that it's the gospel truth or anything, but often the court has done a little work.
The judge has done a little work to like, okay, here's the facts as I see them, which, you know, is going to be a little bit probably more reliable than either side alone.
Point is, we've got all those sources and I'm trying to figure out like, what's the best way to present this?
I think I'm going to listen to him tell it.
In the video, and then we'll stop and go when we need to.
And this video is so magical, eventually, once we truly let it breathe.
Once we decant it a little bit.
Right, right.
So I've already played the beginning where he talks about the exam question.
I don't think we need to rehash that.
He talks about the exam question.
I give him credit for there is a justification, at least in his mind, about why he's doing this in the exam question.
It makes some amount of sense.
I teasered you folks at the end of part one.
This is an attorney work product question and he's teaching Civ Pro.
None of that is like how Bill Maher says the criminal justice system and he's teaching people how to fight employment discrimination.
That's not what's happening.
He's using that, you know, whatever.
He's using real kind of life-ish stuff, but there's no reason it needs to include blanked out slurs.
But I also think like, This is the kind of thing where, had this happened, and he does this test, he gets called out, he apologizes, he's like, oh, I'm not going to do that again.
And that was the end.
I don't think I'd really be too upset at the guy.
Like, times change.
I think there was a time where blanking out those words in an exam in a legal context, it's like, yeah, okay, you know.
Sufficient.
Yeah, you're going to see that, but I think nowadays, and you'll see kind of the case that the black students make, it's a bit of a disadvantage and it's a bit unfair that only the few black students in the classroom have to have this visceral reaction to seeing like, oh, this casual, like hypothetical character says this grotesque racial stuff.
White students can sit there and read it and go, oh yeah, okay, so it's racist, yeah, got it, you know, process.
But just in terms of fairness of participating in a class, if you are a member of a group that sees that, and I think you're going to at least do a bit of a double take and be like, what the fuck?
I mean, certainly the black students certainly represented that they were very affected by this.
And, you know, regardless of exactly how you want to take that, and I'll read some of their words, the fact of the matter is, You are making it such that an already oppressed group of people that is fighting to even have a presence in law schools.
There's only a couple of black students in this class, so they're already kind of singled out in that way.
It's already an uncomfortable, in some ways I'm sure, environment sometimes.
And to give them just one more thing to be like, fucking A man, really?
When you could so easily just not.
Like there is no part of this test.
I'm doing this part now because this is what I teased essentially, which is there's no part of this where you have to do it.
Like you just don't.
There's plenty of other law professors chiming in being like, yeah, I mean, I don't do that.
Yeah.
You could teach a class without doing it.
You could generalize it in a way that's just someone saying like, yeah, I don't like their kind.
And, you know, then it's like fucking you don't know what it still has the same exact effect.
You could do it in ways where you're not making one small segment of your class have to do kind of extra work to kind of process it in a way that's unfair.
You're trying to take a test that's already high pressure, already a high pressure situation, just a little unfair to, you know.
So for those reasons, I feel like if that was the end of the story, if it was like, hey, yeah, no, I'm, yeah, I get it now.
Sorry about that.
I see, you know, I see where you're coming from.
Didn't mean to cause any offense.
I'll take it off the test.
We'll go ahead and credit that question back if they, if anybody, something, you know, and we'll move forward.
If that was all it was, I would not be sitting here, and I don't think anybody would be sitting here With pitchforks like, no, that's not enough.
We need to kill this guy.
And that's important because that's his version of the story, really.
And that's the version that a lot of people have, which is he just, he did this and then he apologized.
Still wasn't enough.
And that's the part where I would hope listeners have learned by now, there's more that happened.
The fact of the matter here is I have no idea to this day who suggested that this was a problem.
I have a very, very strong suspicion that it was not anyone who was in that class.
I have a very strong suspicion that someone might have offhandedly mentioned, you know, hey, there was this question on my exam about X. And then someone who wasn't in the class at all, who had some sort of political axe to grind, decided, oh my gosh, here's our opportunity.
And so before long, the Black Law Students Association, no one of which was in my class, I mean, in fact, there were a couple of people in my class, but they hadn't complained.
I know that for a fact, they reached out to me.
This Black Law Students Association, which we, it's an abbreviation, BLSA, we say BALSA.
So BALSA, Put together this petition.
I love this idea.
This is almost like a Reagan-esque moral panic.
They're out there in the streets.
Yeah.
Politically motivated people.
And you know what they're doing, hun?
They're waiting for a student to offhandedly mention that there's a test that has something in it.
This is our moment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then that's when they jump into action.
They rise.
What is this story?
I don't know what this view of the world...
A Voltron form and a new thing.
What is this version of the world that he is trying to describe here?
There's somebody just asking, what, black students?
Hey, any exam weirdness lately?
Don't mind me.
I'm definitely not a politically motivated agent just waiting to spring it.
What are you talking about?
Okay.
Do you want to know the truth?
At least according to the investigation report, which I feel like is probably going to be pretty reliable, especially when I kind of read you the details.
You want to hear the truth of that?
I do.
Before I do that, have you heard him mention how long he's done this test question and he's never gotten any complaints, that kind of thing?
I think he said in the clip that this is an exam question that he's been using for about 10 years with zero complaints.
Zero complaints, he says.
Until now.
Until this secret agent.
This, I think it was AOC actually in a mustache till she got on campus and outed him.
Well, as it would turn out, that's not true according to the report.
So in the part of the report about this December 2nd, 2020 final exam question, it says multiple students.
Student B, Student C, and Student E, as well as Faculty A, complained about Professor Kilbourn's inclusion of an abbreviated racial epithet in a final exam in the CivPro2 course that he distributed on December 2, 2020.
These students and Faculty A argued that Professor Kilbourn's inclusion of the abbreviated reference to a racial epithet contributed to a racially hostile environment for students in that course.
That's the question and everything.
But it has a footnote there, footnote seven, which says, complainant also complained about the same question that was included in a final exam for the Civ Pro 2 course during the spring 2020 semester.
So this is the second time the student had complained.
For whatever reason, nothing became of that It might've been the kind of thing where the school didn't care.
That's part of this is that black students tend to need to like make a fucking big deal out of something for anyone to listen sometimes.
So, or it could be, this is all speculation.
It could be that someone complained, but was like, well, you do, do you want to make it official or something?
Or, you know, do you want us to do anything?
And they're like, nah, you know, who knows?
It could be someone was like, ah, I don't want to don't want the trouble.
So not entirely accurate there.
And at this point, by the way, when Kilbourn is giving this interview, this report is out.
And he even references it in this interview.
So he knows that's not exactly true.
Someone did complain about it the semester before.
And also, they're his students.
So how could he say it's not his?
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
He knows all that.
It's in the report.
I mean, unless he thinks that The report is just lying, which again, if you want to get to that level of conspiracy theory, you can, I suppose, but like, I don't know, man.
I don't really, it doesn't really make sense to me.
And as I think you just fairly suggested, the petition quite clearly suggested that I had used the entire words, and it was absolutely unacceptable of me to be using this word, and they go into this long, you know, diatribe about the, you know, very, very negative history of that word, to which any reasonable person alive in the United States today says, I knew that already.
You know, we're talking about two different things, and if you think that a respectfully expurgated reference to that word is now equivalent to busting it out and calling someone that, that's real news to me.
And that's really where all this starts from my perspective.
I mean, if someone thinks that I violated the sort of changing norms of interracial interaction, I guess I can acknowledge that.
I mean, I don't know what the rules are.
And if somebody says, hey, you can't do that anymore, you know, I was not in any mood and I still am not in any mood to sort of really fight back against that.
But nobody warned me and nobody treated me with one ounce of respect or human decency to go, hey, you know, things have kind of changed.
Could you just, you know, send a regret message to your class and we'll just move past this?
The university administration could have handled this quietly and constructively in two days.
Yeah, I wonder what stopped them from doing that.
So I want to give him a slight amount of, I don't know if credit's the right word, but I will say in looking at this petition, so I already referenced, I already mentioned that it didn't even hit its signatures or whatever, it does suggest That he used the real words.
It doesn't say it in so many words, but I don't know what's going on there.
I don't know if this is a game of telephone.
While it is true that students in his class definitely seem to have complained.
He said they weren't BALSA students.
Maybe they weren't BALSA students.
And so maybe they got BALSA involved and then in the process of telling them about it, maybe there's some miscommunication.
Who knows?
Maybe it was intentional for all we know.
Yeah.
That might be the case.
Like if you read it, it says the question at issue contained a racial pejorative summarized as followed.
N-blank-blank and B-blank-blank, profane expressions for African Americans and women.
And then it later says, the slur shocked the students and created a momentous distraction causing unnecessary distress and anxiety for those taking the exam.
Considering the subject matter and the call of the question, the use of N-blank and B-blank was certainly unwarranted as it did not serve any educational purpose.
The integration of this dark and vile verbiage, et cetera, et cetera, So I think it's fair to say that that's a little misleading.
And the quote here is, I had to seek counsel immediately after the exam to calm myself from what I had just experienced.
And that's, of course, red meat for all the anti-woke people.
Yeah.
And I want to take one second about that, because there's this argument, and there's a lot of quotes about it.
There's this argument that like, well, you're, hey, Toughen up!
You're gonna have to deal with this in the real world, you triggered snowflakes.
First off, you don't have to.
Like, even if you're a lawyer, even if you want to be a lawyer, you could be a tax attorney, you know?
You don't actually have to do this area of law.
The idea that, like, you would have to see this, like, no, you're going, you're gonna be in your tax law office And a guy's going to come in and say, I've been called a racial slur and just give you no chance.
You know, like that's not really true.
You can specialize and do your own thing.
Yeah.
You probably have to pass the bar exam, which I don't think the fucking bar exam does this, but like, you know, you might have to read cases, you know, involving racism and any historical cases.
God knows there's going to be awful language in there.
Sure.
But that's a little bit different.
Then this.
I mean, to make the best argument kind of for the black students here, or for anyone who was affected by seeing this, I think it's one thing to know I am reading a case from 18-fucking-70, you know, involving these racists saying these horrible things.
It's another to be taking a test that you know your professor wrote And that he just concocted these hypotheticals and the hypothetical he went to in his mind involves a guy being like, oh, that person's an N blank and a B blank.
You know, like that, that's a different thing.
That's your professor, the person entrusted with teaching you doing a thing on purpose.
That's pretty messed up.
Yeah.
That's a different thing.
You know, a black person could see or hear the N-word in a song or something, but then someone walking down the street calls them that.
That's a different fucking thing.
Yeah.
It's ludicrous to say a word is causing it.
It's like, well, yeah, it depends on the context.
Right.
The context is you're in a high stress environment taking an exam and a trusted teacher who wrote this exam decided to put this in.
There's a lot of the things about heart palpitations and had to seek counsel immediately.
I'm not sure how much I go for that kind of thing, but like, yeah, I mean, once people are affected by something and seemingly no one cares and they're not doing anything about it, maybe that's why they write a petition this way, that's worded this way.
You know, whatever.
Bottom line here, these are students.
These are still very young adults.
And they are exercising their First Amendment right.
to complain about something.
And I think their complaints are pretty damn reasonable.
And even if you don't 100% agree to the letter on everything they're saying, I think it's inarguable that they have a point and it's very easy to just avoid this whole fucking thing, which even the professor acknowledges.
So at that point, I think you need to be the bigger person and just suck it up.
If you're the teacher, instead of telling the students, if it's between students who are upset at you for doing something and you, a grown ass man with all the privilege and age and experience and position of power, I am going to go ahead and put the onus on you to react better.
Yeah.
Especially considering this was such a tiny thing in the grand scheme.
This was a petition that even to this day didn't even get 500 signatures.
The Twitter has barely any views.
This is not much of anything.
Nearly three years later.
Yeah, and you can be a grown-ass man and say, well, okay, I think the way they did this, you can even think to yourself, well, the way they did this, that's a little much.
I feel like they're being unfair.
Just swallow your fucking pride for a second and just deal with it.
Yeah, and I think what's funny, too, is that he kind of alludes to that in the video himself, putting the responsibility on the student or the administration or something to raise it to him that this is not the way we do things anymore.
But the way he responded to that hypothetical in that video was he was like, I'm sorry, I didn't realize blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And had that been his reaction to your point, Hun, I think this all probably would have ended at that point.
Yeah, but then it gets complicated.
So that leads us into what happened next.
Oh, great.
I'm on the timeline from the investigation report from OAE, which is the Office for Access and Equity.
So they're kind of in charge of this investigation, all that.
Their report says the exam distributed December 2nd.
On December 18th, Faculty A made a third party report regarding Professor Kilbourn's use of racial pejoratives in the exam question.
It's interesting.
We have that footnote that said a student reported at the prior semester, but we don't really know what became of that.
But setting that aside, the first thing was Faculty A, and then it says December 19th, the next day.
So, you know, this is two weeks after the exam, but you know, whatever.
I mean, it's finals.
People are busy.
Student B shared concerns with Dickerson and Spanbauer regarding they and their classmates' concerns with Professor Kilbourn's exam question.
December 22, Davidson met with Professor Kilbourn via Zoom to discuss the general race-based concerns with Professor Kilbourn's Civ Pro 2 exam question.
Davidson met with Professor Kilbourn at the request of JMLS leadership and Professor Kilbourn.
I think that might be like that call he talked about.
Right, that Zoom call.
Yeah, December 24th, OAE received a first-hand report from student B concerning the impact of the question on them as a female minority student.
So someone in his class.
It has to be!
That would be pretty misleading.
I mean, that would be like first-hand report from a student who heard it secondhand?
There's no way.
Yeah, that would be very actively misleading.
And again, if he wants to believe that, I guess he can, but I find that implausible.
So on Christmas, apparently, OAE responded to Student B's report and invited them to a meeting.
And so, you know, there's probably like the winter break and all that.
And so they come back.
So January 7th, here's where we get to the next part in our story.
Okay.
This is the part I've kind of kept.
I mean, you know it's somewhere, but I've kind of kept it.
Now, Student D is actually someone who wasn't in the class.
This is someone from Valsa.
I'll tell you how I know that, but it's elsewhere in the report.
Student D met via Zoom for four hours to discuss the exam question at issue and other students' concerns.
Now, on its face, this is an admirable thing for him to have done.
So like Kilbourne at this point, January 7th, so the shit hasn't hit the fan necessarily.
This isn't in the investigation timeline, but I see that the petition was January 5th.
So that goes live January 5th.
Who knows when anybody heard about it, though.
You know, there's tweets.
Balsa is making this known December 30th are the first tweets about it.
There's other posts.
So, like, he probably is aware.
The petition itself doesn't go up until January 5th.
No way to know when he found out about that.
But the point is, up until this point, he's been, from what we can see, mostly pretty good.
He said, hey, if anyone wants to talk, you know, or talk to someone else, by the way, like, he's been pretty cool with all that.
You can almost feel for him a little bit.
And so on January 7th, he is talking to student D, who again seems to be from Balsa, not in his class.
Like that's that much I know.
Right.
Student D met via Zoom for four hours to discuss the exam question at issue and other students concerns.
Spoiler, this conversation is the reason that he got banned from campus temporarily.
So here's Killborn's version of this four-hour call.
And this is from the Brian Leiter article.
Now, if you remember, the way it was originally written said, ah, he's been banned from school for this question.
Killborn has essentially allowed all these people to write as though he's been banned from campus and all this other stuff for this question.
That's happened for several days.
Why does the media know about this?
I don't know.
It feels Kinda like he's gone nuts and called everybody he knows, but that's just speculation.
But it says here, update 115.21 at the bottom of the article.
Professor Kilbourne has written to me as follows.
"I've just learned that my suspension has been a huge failure of communication from the university to me.
While the battle over my exam language continues, it turns out I was actively misled into believing my suspension was related to that language." On Thursday, January 7th, I voluntarily agreed to talk to one of the Black Law Students Association members who had advanced this petition against me.
Around hour 1 or 1.5 of a 4-hour Zoom call that I endured from 5pm to 9pm with this young man, He asked me to speculate as to why the Dean had not sent me Balsa's attack letter.
Attack letter.
And I flippantly responded, quote, I suspect she's afraid if I saw the horrible things said about me in that letter, I would become homicidal.
Wow.
Mind you, we're still on Kilborn's version.
Conversation continued without a hitch for 2.5 or three more hours.
And we concluded amicably with a promise to talk more later.
He apparently turned around and reported that I was a homicidal threat.
Our university's behavioral threat assessment team convened, with no evidence of who I am at all, and recommended to my dean that I be placed on administrative leave and barred from campus.
Mind you, we here at UIC are on a pandemic-related lockout, so none of our courses is conducted on campus.
Whatever.
And I had no plan to come anywhere near campus for at least the next two weeks until state authorities give us the go-ahead to return to campus.
Nevertheless, having full discretion to implement or reject that recommendation, and knowing me fairly well, having worked with me quite a bit for the past four years, my dean decided that I was indeed a homicidal threat.
And that's where my earlier story picks up.
She summoned me to a Zoom meeting at 8.30 a.m.
Monday morning, and while both orally and in writing she attributed this action to complaints of possible violations of university policies, including the non-discrimination statement, she refused to reveal to me why I had been placed on admin leave and barred from campus, with all of my classes for the entire semester canceled immediately.
The Office of Access and Equity, who oddly is in charge of threat assessment issues, also failed to inform me for four full days, all while I bombarded them with emails concerning my objections to being placed on leave with no hearing and connection with discrimination complaints related to my exam.
They told me only midway into our short Zoom call at about 3.10pm today.
This guy flew off the handle.
Oh my God.
So that's Friday.
So from Tuesday to Friday, he was, you know, held without information for four whole days.
The discrimination complaints about my exam, my dean's support of those complaints, and the OAE's investigation of potential action against me on that separate basis is proceeding.
The outrage that has been expressed about that whole debacle can and should continue.
But as it turns out, I have not yet been suspended summarily on the basis of that exam question.
So there he is letting the cat out of the bag there.
Everyone is doing things to him.
Poor this guy.
led to believe the suspension was a result of the exam slash discrimination complaints.
Yeah.
And no one disabused me of this until just a few minutes ago.
Everyone is doing things to him.
Poor this guy.
Wow.
You know, interesting note, Brian Leiter, who again is just an advocate for this guy.
The last sentence of this article after that, after that correction update says, while there is still no grounds for investigating Professor Kilbourne or apologizing for his exam, it is clear that Dean Dickerson did not act improperly with regard to the suspension.
I apologize to Dean Dickerson for my reliance on Professor Kilbourn's reports about the sanctions.
Even his own advocate is saying that at the bottom, but I'm sure that kind of gets lost again because it's a correction issued later.
So, that's his version starting there, even taking him at his word.
What is the picture here so far?
What do you see happening here in your words, listener, Lydia S.?
Listener Lydia S. Taking him for his word.
What happened was he was having a stand-up conversation with someone from Balsa and said a particular word which then turned into everyone thinking that he was literally going to murder people.
And that was probably the reason he was suspended, but he was never told that.
And he was misled and under the impression that he was suspended because of his exam question.
And I'll give him a little credit because the letter that he got on January 12th from Dean Darby Dickerson, it is true that it does say, and he quoted it, your place on administrative leave with pay, by the way, your benefits will remain intact.
This action is being taken as a result of additional complaints and concerns brought forth by students regarding possible violations of university policies, including the non-discrimination statement.
You will remain on paid administrative leave until further notice.
There are many things.
You will not engage in UIC duties or activities unless directed to do so by me.
You may not enter UIC premises.
You will remain available for contact from 8 a.m.
to 5 p.m.
Monday through Friday regarding an investigation into these matters.
and any duties you are performing consistent with item 1 above unless you provide another number, blah blah blah.
You may be scheduled for an investigatory interview and other meetings at any time during business hours.
You are requested to not discuss any investigation and the events being investigated with any UIC employees, students, or potential witnesses to the events being investigated.
We request that you not contact any such persons at work or otherwise.
This includes contact at a residence, place of work, Or other via blah, blah, blah, telephone, email.
You may discuss any investigation with administrative personnel who have been informed that you are being placed on administrative leave and subject to an investigation.
These directives will begin immediately upon your receipt of this letter.
What you just read to me does not feel like because you wrote this exam question, right?
It just says that there have been complaints.
Not only that, not only that, it says the result of additional complaints.
Right, right.
So in the quote, I read you, he makes a lot of assertions that I don't know are true.
And I'll tell you this, even in his lawsuit, from what I've read, everything I've read, and I've read all of it, but I could be, you know, forgetting something or whatever.
I never saw anywhere where he provided any proof of who did what exactly.
And in fact, it's part of the back and forth in the lawsuits is like, oh, you weren't specific enough about who did what kind of thing.
And so he just asserts that his dean is the one to like sign off on the homicidal threat decision.
I don't know that that's substantiated anywhere.
This feels to me, by the way, you're sending an update to Brian Leiter in the heat of the moment after you just seriously misled a fucking a bunch of media people who you apparently called.
Yeah.
I feel like he's going to be giving a version of the story that's like, oh, this is the least my fault possible because I can't believe that this happened, you know.
But if I look at the University of Illinois Chicago website that talks about the Behavioral Threat Assessment Team, that's under the Office of Preparedness and Response.
Doesn't seem to be under the Office of Access and Equity that I know of.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Because the quote was the Office of Access and Equity, who oddly is in charge of threat assessment issues.
I don't even see that that's true, actually.
Maybe it was then or maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I don't know that that's true.
He makes a lot of those quick claims like my dean was in charge of this or could have done that.
I think it's entirely possible that they have a policy that is sort of like self enacting here.
Remember Virginia Tech?
You know, the devastating shooting in 2007, I think.
I remember hearing about that and I had to leave a class because it was so upsetting to me.
And there's been obviously more, many more shootings.
It's America.
This is where the land of shootings.
I would imagine there might be a violence prevention strategy and a policy that might involve, OK, if anyone reports anything like this, then you fucking you got to do the following things.
Yeah.
And you just have to do it.
I've tried to read through it.
It was so long that I was like, fucking, it doesn't matter.
Who cares?
I'm not going to read through the policy.
That's probably what it is.
That's a reasonable thing.
If I were making a violence prevention strategy in the year 2020, whatever this is, when there have been these shootings and the whatever, I would assume that it's going to be like, yeah, if someone online says, I'm going to shoot my class, then you fucking respond as though that's happening.
Like you just, You do not, because the last thing you want as an institution is any talk of, well, yeah, you know, they saw this student or this teacher say, I'm going to kill somebody and they didn't do anything.
Yeah.
Can you imagine?
Can you imagine if they have a report from a student that a teacher said, I'm going to turn homicidal and they did nothing?
Like, yeah, I'm sorry.
I think you characterize it pretty well.
Stuff is always happening to Killborn.
He's just this innocent victim.
Yeah.
As much as you'd like to say, how dare you treat this seriously?
Well, if a student said, hey, this guy said like he might turn homicidal.
OK, why don't we go ahead and just again with his version, we'll take his version.
I'm going to I'm going to give you a different version in a minute.
But just even taking his version, if his version is he made a completely obviously harmless joke, And a student who was mad at him or didn't like him went and reported that and said he said he was going to be homicidal.
Okay, well, you'd be mad at that student, but that's still a fucking student doing something and you're a fucking adult.
Should it be national news?
That someone somewhere who's probably like 23 did something kind of shitty?
Is that national fucking?
Should every blogger about law in the world be writing about what's happened to you because a student might have done something irrational?
Or should you maybe calm the fuck down and wait till the dust settles before you do a press spree about it?
Absolutely.
Wait the few days and figure out what's happened.
And like you said, when we read that letter, I originally presented that as, well, you know, he's got a point.
The letter's got, well, not really actually.
Additional complaints.
Here's the deal with that.
He makes a big deal to Brian Leiter about this.
Oh, I was misled.
Yeah.
But like, were you though?
That was you assuming, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, especially since your exam was December 2nd, buddy.
This is January 12th, and a lot has happened since then.
And remember that point I read, number five, you are requested to not discuss any investigation in the events being investigated with any UIC employees, students, or potential witnesses to the events being investigated.
We request that you not contact any such persons at work or otherwise.
That could maybe tip you off that, hmm, does it have something to do with me having contacted or talked to a student about this?
You know, like, maybe they didn't come out and say it, but also, maybe Dean Dickerson doesn't know if they are allowed to reveal any details because of anonymity or something.
Like, if Dean Dickerson says, yeah, it's because you said this comment in a phone call, Well, now he knows exactly who did what, and he's already in trouble for retaliating or potentially intimidating people who he's mad at.
So, that seems to me to be a completely reasonable thing to do, to perhaps err on the side of protecting a student who might want to remain anonymous by not spelling out exactly the reason that you're being banned from campus.
Yeah.
Man, I really wish that they listed number whatever Also, don't talk to the media.
God, and then we wouldn't have to be reading about this or hearing about it.
I know, that might be the kind of thing where it's some fucking, they're already being careful about First Amendment-y, blah, blah, blah, who knows.
Yeah, fine.
But like, you're being such an obnoxious asshole.
You've been suspended and you're doing a media tour to pretend that this is all because of an exam question.
As he keeps presenting, it's all because of this exam question, all because of this exam question.
Really?
Why don't I go to the report and we get perhaps the student's view of that conversation.
Would you like to hear that?
I would.
Let's get away from his narrative.
There's like several things about this that student D reported.
So January 7th, Kilbourn, four hours in, blah, blah, blah, setting it up.
During this meeting, Professor Kilbourn made what was perceived by the student as a threatening remark.
During his subsequent OAE interview, Student D indicated that he had never met Professor Kilbourn or taken his classes, and that Student D initiated the Zoom meeting to seek Professor Kilbourn's views of the exam question.
Student D described Professor Kilbourn's statements during that meeting as involving a lot of things that Student D did not like.
Listen to that again.
Back to the quote.
The student D did not like.
Back to the quote.
That student D respected some of Professor Kilbourne's comments, but that student D was shocked by others.
What are those you might ask, hon?
Included among such shocking comments was Professor Kilbourne's response to a question about why Professor Kilbourne thought Balsa was attacking him.
Professor Kilbourne said that Balsa was, quote, coming for him.
And when you come for him, you are coming as a, quote, enemy.
Two other examples cited by student D related to Professor Kilbourn's accusing student D of calling Professor Kilbourn a, quote, liar.
The first such comment.
This is this is here we go.
Buckle up.
The first such comment occurred when Student D asked whether JMLS, that's the school, John fucking Racist Slaveholder Law School, whatever.
Yeah.
John fucking Racist Slaveholder.
I think it stands for that, yeah.
Racist Law School, Schmidt.
Administration had ever reported student concerns about race to Professor Kilbourn.
Listen to that.
Whether JMLS administration had ever reported student concerns about race.
That's not just about the exam, by the way.
About race.
So the student D may be privy to these earlier complaints that I've already told you about.
And there's more complaints, by the way, that student D might be privy to.
Which Professor Kilbourne said had not occurred.
So, okay, how would you react to that if you're a student and you know that this occurred and he says not occurred?
Professor Kilbourne also asked student D, quote, are you calling me a liar again?
After Professor Kilbourne said that he had not read the BALSA letter.
And Student D said that was hard to believe.
Student D then asked why Professor Kilborn had not read the letter.
Professor Kilborn responded that Dean Darby Dickerson had not shared it with him.
Student D asked why not.
Professor Kilborn then reportedly stated that Dean Dickerson knew Professor Kilborn, quote, is extremely emotional, and if he read the letter, his head would explode and he would become homicidal, unquote.
Student D reported that he asked Professor Kilborn not to say that again.
Student D reported to OAE that this homicidal comment concerned him.
He clarified he did not know Professor Kilbourn well enough to know if Professor Kilbourn was serious, but the homicidal comment concerned Student D enough that he felt it necessary to share with other BALSA students, OAE, and university and law school administrators, including Dean Dickerson and Vice Dean Spanbauer, who were present during a BALSA Zoom meeting January 11th.
In particular, Student D shared that his concerns about Professor Kilbourn's homicidal comment were heightened because of the recent violent events at the United States Capitol building, which had occurred on January 6, 2021, only one day before Professor Kilbourn's homicidal comment.
Yeah, when you see an angry, bald white guy yelling, At a black guy and about black people complaining.
And, you know, here's the thing.
You can disagree with this student's assessment or something or choice to report this.
Pin in that, though.
But like, it's not the most unreasonable thing in the world.
And again, if this whole fucking maelstrom boiled down to, I think that 23 year old slightly overreacted when the professor grown man said homicidal, like, That's what you're going to pin your fucking hopes to?
You have to put in context how big of a deal is being made at this.
And if it comes down to that, then that's absurd.
You're just digging in and refusing to back down.
Because really what should happen is the minute Kilbourn found out about this, and that was the reason he got banned, he should have been like, fucking call off of Jesus Christ, all the media stuff, nevermind, sorry.
That's on me.
There's a lot of bullshit policies in life, but I don't know, at a school, at a college in America?
A policy of like, no fucking around with any comments like that?
Yeah, I mean, there's zero tolerance for students when they make comments like that.
Administrations take it seriously.
Why wouldn't they take it seriously from a professor?
And especially a guy who's clearly fucking angry at a group of black people.
Yeah, clearly fucking angry.
Called them enemies.
Right, exactly.
Called them enemies.
And there's already this discrepant conversation regarding race and maybe a blind spot for him.
Now, here's the other thing.
I myself wondered what was going on with Student D here, because and again, fucking if the worst case is true and Student D just had a grudge and like fucked with him in this moment.
Yeah.
That's the worst case?
That's an interpersonal spat.
How many of those per day are there everywhere in the entire world?
This is not news.
I was wondering why the delay, because if this conversation was on the 7th and then he wasn't banned until the 12th, that felt a little weird.
You know, I was just trying to, again, I'm always trying, I want to make sure I have my facts right.
I want to make sure I'm being as fair as possible when I'm doing a debunking.
So that I wanted to make sure like, is there something weird there?
Because if there's a, if there's a claim like, oh, this man is dangerous.
And then you're like, well, but we'll wait four days to do anything.
You know, I was worried about attention there.
And so I was kind of looking into that.
From what I can tell, it actually makes the student look a little bit better because the student didn't just run and report this.
Even though some of the wording makes it sound like he did, it took a minute to puzzle through this.
It sounds like they had a meeting schedule.
So, JMLS and OAE met with BALSA for a Zoom meeting on the 11th.
And it might just be that that was when they were going to do it.
OAE is doing a lot of other intake with other students with complaints.
Like, they're doing a lot of stuff.
And so, what it sounds like happened was, they had this conversation on the 7th.
For whatever reason, the meeting between BALSA and OAE was scheduled for the 11th.
This is somewhat speculative, but seems reasonable to me.
And in that meeting, the student relayed what happened in the conversation.
And from there, it may be that once the student has said these things, Then the administration and the threat assessment team and all that stuff, maybe they're obligated at that point.
And so from there, it kicks in, he's banned that day or the next morning or whatever.
And that kind of explains that delay to me.
Yeah, I just pulled up the calendar too.
And like that timeline actually seems really reasonable.
The Zoom call, that four hour Zoom call was on a Thursday and then the 11th was on a Monday.
So it's really just the Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Exactly.
So actually, yeah, it's a good point.
I had mixed it up.
I thought that was during the week.
But yeah, if they talked on the 7th, that's a Thursday.
And by the way, they talked until 9 p.m.
on a Thursday.
Right.
Who knows what the student, you know, whatever fucking who knows a Friday.
He's probably thinking about like, what what did I just experience?
Or OAE is busy.
Yeah, I don't know.
And maybe he he's like, hey, I should talk to you folks about this.
And they're like, all right.
We have our meeting Monday.
Yeah.
Or something.
That would be a one business day.
Yeah, that's pretty reasonable.
Yeah.
This is all speculation, but I think it's pretty reasonable.
And the possibilities are certainly, again, when you're trying to interpret with imperfect information, it's pretty fair to posit non-fucking conspiracy theory, evil person, twirling mustache.
Yeah.
Possibilities.
And this seems pretty reasonable.
It also would suggest that possibly student D didn't even really know or intend that it would turn into that kind of thing.
Because otherwise, maybe student D would have been like, nah, this is an emergency.
I got to talk to you now.
You know, who knows?
Again, speculation, but like that fits like that kind of the thing that makes the most sense to me as an explanation is that like, hey, we should talk about this.
How's Monday?
Cool.
Monday, the student says it because it just says the homicidal comment concerns student DNF that he felt it necessary to share with other BALSA members.
OAE and University Law School administrators, including Dean Dickerson and Vice Dean Spanbauer, who were present during the BALSA Zoom meeting on January 11th.
That's a weird way of putting it, because it kind of at first made me think, oh, he proactively sought them out to tell it, and maybe he did, but it also doesn't have to mean that.
Like, it might mean it was serious enough that during this meeting he kind of brought it up.
Yeah.
You know, so there's plenty of room in there for like this student did a pretty reasonable thing, even if you were of the opinion that this was an obvious joke.
It might not have been like this guy's a pretty angry fucking guy.
Yeah.
But even if you were of the opinion that like, oh, that's a joke and someone's overreacting.
It seems like there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for student D's behavior that's a joke.
That's not like super crazy.
It's like, hey, yeah, this is kind of concerning, you know, like it seems it's weird.
They said enemies and like homicidal and January six.
Maybe I'm being paranoid, but just I felt a little weird.
And then once he says the magic words of homicidal, then that's a student reporting something to an administration.
I'm sure from there they just have to fucking do what they did.
So all this is to say that's why he was banned from fucking campus.
You can kind of see the progression of events.
And I believe it's strongly incumbent upon a grown ass fucking man to realize that that's all actually kind of reasonable when you look at it.
And even if you're annoyed about steps in the chain, there's perfectly reasonable explanations for it.
But he's freaked out so much that I don't think he can fucking back down because he's gone so public.
That just goes to show that maybe you shouldn't stir up a big fucking thing with totally incomplete information.
before you know the facts.
Because now he's like pot committed, as they say.
And now I just think he's gotten the attention he wants and people have latched onto it in anti-woke circles in the usual places.
And he probably is enjoying that attention and running with it.
And now there's no chance he's going to like interpret things fairly.
The threat assessment meant he had to do certain things before he could return to campus, including like drug testing and...
And that's interesting.
Yeah.
Like you could argue with some of these policies, but like fucking relative to what, you know, like there's, there's plenty of people who do just jobs for pennies compared to what this guy probably makes who get drug tested all the time just for no fucking reason.
So like.
the context of you have been flagged as potentially like a violent threat to students, to kids, essentially.
Sure.
A little drug test.
That's a condition of your employment.
Whatever.
If you want to argue that, it just doesn't seem that unreasonable to me.
But the way he presented it to like before he knew what was going on, he said in a two minute Zoom meeting at 830 a.m.
Tuesday.
Again, this is before he found out the truth.
My dean placed me on an indefinite administrative leave.
All my classes were cancelled hours before one was set to meet for the first time.
With 70 students curtly told to find another course, I'm told, my committee memberships were cancelled, including university promotion and tenure, to which I was unanimously elected by my faculty peers, and I'm barred from campus and from all faculty communications.
I don't see anywhere else where that was reiterated, that he was cancelled from that membership.
Now he was told he can't, there was like a meeting I think coming up, and so he couldn't attend because of him being barred from campus or whatever that stuff was.
Right.
But I don't, I didn't see even anywhere else like later where he alleged that he got kicked out of it and wasn't allowed to come back, you know, so there's a whole lot of like, I feel like he's a pretty unreliable narrator in this stuff.
Yeah.
And he was suspended with pay.
I specifically read that.
Benefits.
Benefits, pay.
All that.
Now let me go back to the timeline from the beginning so you can get an idea of what all was going on here.
June 9th, 2020.
You'll remember the exam thing was December 2nd, 2020.
And you, unlike me, can understand the order of dates.
Track dates.
So June 9th being before that happened by several months.
This is interesting because he has said nary a word about this, what I'm going to talk about, and I think it's A little significant.
OAE received a report from Student A regarding Professor Kilbourn.
They expressed Professor Kilbourn made racially insensitive comments during a Spring 2020 Civil Procedure II class lecture.
Okay.
So that's, again, predating all of this.
Contrary to the idea that this all started because the exam, et cetera, et cetera.
On June 12th, three days later, Title IX Equity Compliance Specialist conducted an intake with Student A. So they're just getting in the full story there.
Four days later, Title IX coordinator reached out to JMLS Vice Dean of Academic Affairs, Julie Spanbauer, to inform her of concerns and invite a JMLS representative to join a notice conversation with Professor Kilbourn.
Spanbauer responded that JMLS Dean Darby Dickerson agreed that Spanbauer would attend the meeting.
That's interesting, right?
July 1st, a couple weeks later, OAE, via Davidson and Miller, conducted a notice conversation With Professor Kilbourn.
Julie Spanbauer was the JMLS representative present.
July 2nd, Professor Kilbourn email-replied to OAE acknowledging the non-discrimination statement by saying, quote, So as much as you might try to take the conspiratorial view that this is all being like, you know, retconned or something, like to try to justify stuff later on.
It's not just that they're like, well, actually, we had this complaint that we didn't tell anyone about, but it was our secret complaint.
But it did happen, which would have been fine, by the way, because that you can complain anonymously and not really pursue it.
But not only that, it's saying they met with him and said and notified him about this complaint.
Oh, yeah.
He's just a liar.
I would imagine what happened was in Killborn's mind, someone complained about something and it's probably one of the complaints that I'll get to later.
And he was like, oh, that wasn't true.
They misinterpreted me.
And then he's just like, all right, whatever.
That's fine that he thought that, but it's still important information that he's been notified before.
Yeah.
Like literally a notice conversation.
That means like, you're on notice, buddy, that this happened.
Okay, then we get the CivPro exam.
So we get, we've already gone through some of that.
Here's another interesting one, by the way, I didn't say.
January 12th, OAE is made aware of an exam review request from student E. I don't know anything about student E. This is, I think the only thing with student E. To review their fall 2020 CivPro 2 exam.
In their request, they stated, Professor Kilborn is quote, insensitive of black students.
And that they would like to be spared the trauma of requesting access through Professor Kilbourne directly.
So.
Wow.
Yeah.
I suspect, and this is based on past friendships, conversations, everything, that not just black people, but any other marginalized identity, gay people, trans people, you name it.
I suspect that they probably have a pretty good radar for when maybe a guy's kind of a fucking racist, but trying to contain it.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
I think a lot of white people think they're getting away with it, you know?
Like a lot of white people who are probably kind of racist are like, these black people don't know I'm racist.
You know, like they think they're pulling it off.
Black people, for example, are what, 11% of the country or something like that.
They have to deal with white people a lot more than white people have to, you know, quote unquote, deal with them.
They have had these interactions a lot.
They're not idiots.
I think a lot of white people very badly underestimate black people a lot in terms of this and discount their experience, you know, and want to do the like, well, what about this?
You know, whenever there's something that a black person complains might have been racist, Seemingly every white person in the world comes out and says, they might have just been having a bad day.
And like, I used to think that too when I was a kid.
I was like, yeah, they're just probably over-interpreting everything.
Now, having learned more about the world, it's the exact opposite.
Like it's actually, there's so much more racism than I would have thought.
And black people are dealing with it all the time.
And it's only when It gets to a certain level that usually they even go through the fucking hassle of complaining about it.
Based on how horrible that process is, of either calling racism or calling sexism, or given how horrible that process is, if anything, that's way underreported.
And it's only the times where people feel like, all right, it's risen to the level of, yeah, I'll fucking, I'll go talk to the white administration of my white school about this white professor.
The view of Fire and Bill Maher and basically this entire anti-woke industrial complex is that actually it's just all sunshine and puppies and rainbows for any black student or minority student of any kind who wants to complain about the slightest imposition on them at all.
Even at colleges, I don't think that's true.
You know, like you're at a law school.
Yeah.
Maybe at the humanities program in a party school somewhere.
Like, yeah, maybe they're pretty cool or something.
But like, you're still in a law school.
Law is an overwhelmingly white profession.
You're still, by the way, think about this angle, specifically law school.
These students need recommendations.
They need clerkships.
These black students that are trying to make it in a white fucking law world have every incentive to not complain because of how much they, again, need these privileged white people.
All this is to say that I think it would take quite a lot to get to the point of wanting to make a fuss about this.
personally.
And I think what has likely happened, and we can't really know because we haven't been in every class.
We haven't interacted with this person.
But already from what I've heard of him and what I see him writing when he's referring to, again, the Balsa students as his enemies that are attacking him, I feel like his black students probably are like this fucking guy.
Yeah, I think he... Here we go again.
Yeah, like I'm getting a vibe.
And so, yeah, they might interpret certain things more harshly than like you or I might think they sound, maybe.
But I bet you that's because they know better.
Like, I bet you that's because they have the experience and have dealt with this and probably know this fucking guy better than we do.
Yeah.
And so my hypothesis as to all of this is that this guy might kind of suck.
And I have top secret evidence of that that I cannot wait to reveal to you, that I've been teasing you with.
Top secret!
Because it's so good.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
And so stuff like this student E says, this professor Kilborn is insensitive of black students and they don't want to talk to them.
You could read that as, oh great, they're part of the cabal of BALSA students that have decided to attack this innocent white man.
Okay, that's passable, I guess, you know, like you could read it as they all thought he used the real words and so they're on an attack spree and the blah, blah, blah.
But, well, first of all, not this person because the student clearly took the exam and so they know that they did.
But also, you could read it as they fucking know who they're dealing with.
They actually know better than we know who he is.
And so this is not about a fucking exam question, man.
There's so much more than that.
And every single time he talks about, oh, it's all about this exam question.
It's all about.
No, he's lying.
It's not.
Yeah.
Shall I get to some of the things it is about?
Yes.
Here are the allegations.
This investigation was quite fair and they found him.
I don't want to say innocent.
It's not a criminal thing, but they did not substantiate or I guess endorse or whatever you would say.
Several of the counts.
I think that lends some credibility.
For example, there was a student, I shouldn't go too into this because it ultimately doesn't really affect things, although, you know, you can read into it what you will.
There was a black student who was having attendance problems and Kilborn was kind of emailing him being like, what's going on?
You know, and then like he wasn't replying to the emails.
And so you can kind of see Kilborn get a little paternal about this whole, you know, like you're not showing up enough.
And yeah, that's a college professor.
You know, it's not like, you wouldn't say it's like, okay, that's over the line, you know, but it's like, all right, it's a little.
And it's one of those things where if you have experience with him and you're kind of thinking like you've seen some other signs that this guy might be treating black people kind of differently, then maybe you're a little on edge about that.
And you're, you're seeing this in this behavior.
And he ended up like forcing the student out because they, they missed too much class.
And the student was like, hey, what the hell?
I can't actually, it was because of fucking, by the way, COVID.
The student's excuse was, hey, it was COVID and my family got COVID and like my elderly grandma, all that stuff.
And this thing was concerning enough to another teacher That the teacher actually tried to contact Kilborn.
And Kilborn has a thing where like, oh, it went to junk mail forever.
And then he finally responds.
And his response is, hey, I don't have to share anything with you because that student hasn't told me that you're privy to any of this.
And there's no, it doesn't really concern you.
So he kind of blows off the other professor.
And honestly, that's all ended up being like the investigation is like, yeah, no, that's kind of reasonable.
You know, like you could have, I guess, talked to him or you could like this professor was concerned about the manner in which he was talking to this student.
And there's a little bit of, you know, there's a little bit of a hint of like, are you being a little condescending here?
You know, it's hard with stuff like racism and sometimes where it's like, you can't really say for sure, you know, he didn't, he didn't really directly say like anything that would be like, ah, positive, exact proof of racism.
But it was a little bit of a weird interaction.
But here's why I'm telling you all this.
The report says, yeah, we didn't substantiate that.
So here, I'll just read it.
Two students allege you discriminated against this student by dropping him from spring 2020 and refused to re-add the student to the course based on his race.
That's the allegation.
Four community members allege you imposed a discriminatory in-person participation grade bump policy during fall 2020 that precluded black students who could not attend live classes due to COVID restrictions.
They end up finding those not being substantiated, because Killborn had reasonable reasons to do what he did.
The student was not performing, was not doing assignments well.
They looked through the assignments, they did all that stuff, and they're like, yeah, okay, that's all within normal teacher stuff, you know?
And so, contrary to this being a fucking, as they say, kangaroo court that's gonna just find him guilty of whatever and run him out on a rail, No, they actually didn't.
They had two students and a teacher complaining about this, and OAE said, no, not substantiated.
Doesn't that lend a little credibility to OAE, you think, a little bit?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think it's really interesting that with that particular instance, they're sharing That they understand teachers have discretion, you know, in certain instances and stuff.
So coming to that determination on that particular count, I think, does lend significant credibility to the outcome of the entire report.
Yeah.
And think about if the world worked like these assholes think it works.
I mean, how much easier of a story.
And that meaning like, oh, you can just say anything as a black student and then they'll kill.
Like, hey, this guy kicked me out of his class.
Yeah.
And then, like, wouldn't let me join, and it's all because my grandma got COVID.
Literally, they say this, oh, you have to find the best excuse to be able to, you know, victimize this poor fucking white professor.
Oh, yeah.
If that's true, like, isn't this a way better story?
Yeah.
I'm a black guy who is suffering disproportionately from COVID.
Look at how he's talking to me here.
He kicks me out of his class, doesn't let me back in.
Yeah, man, like that would be a way easier thing if it's all just a fucking witch hunt.
That's a way better story even than what they end up getting him in trouble for, which we'll see.
The main thing that pisses me off so much about this.
Well, no, I can't say that.
I always start saying stuff like that.
It's just not true.
One of the things that pisses me off so much about this is how much universities are actually pretty conservative, relatively speaking, like when it comes to the administration.
Oh, yeah, the administration.
Absolutely.
Yeah, they're they're very reasonable to a degree that's probably like Yeah, it's a little, you know, but I don't mind the idea that students are going to be pushing usually for things to be more progressive, more woke, more left.
And there's going to be an institutional kind of lag there.
And sometimes I do think that there's groups of children, students who say things that are dumb.
Fine.
And then the university is like, yeah, no.
Okay.
We, we appreciate your concerns.
We're not going to fire this person.
Yeah.
Like that internal kind of checks and balances.
Yeah.
In the case of Yale, fuck that.
It's way too far.
Like, I don't like that at all.
They should be like, Sally Sitwell.
Yeah.
What the fuck are we paying her for?
Yeah.
That's way too conservative.
But in the case of like some of the complaints about Kilborn, yeah, sure.
With that credibility in mind, here's what they did find.
Here's the other stuff.
So that was the discrimination heading.
They were like, the first one is discrimination.
The second one is more under the umbrella of harassment.
Okay.
Which actually becomes important for the law stuff, but don't think harassment as in you're harassing me directly, but think like in the umbrella of you're creating a bit of a hostile environment.
Yeah.
That's unfair to a group of students who, you know, happen to have a minority identity.
Protected class.
So under that heading, I can read you kind of the charges here.
Six students and one faculty member reported that you engaged in race-based harassment of students between January 2020 and January 2021 as follows.
During a January 23, 2020 lecture in the CivPro2 course, you allegedly referred to racial minorities as cockroaches.
Yikes.
So we'll deal with these one by one.
in civil rights claims as part of discussion of modern day extortion theory and referred to media stories that expose the negative behavior of white men as lynching.
Yikes.
So we'll deal with these one by one.
I want to make very clear that my goal in fucking all of my life is to try my best to make sure my brain corresponds to the reality of the fucking planet.
And when I saw that, because a lot of the other side, and there's very little of it, because again, it's all this entire online space and the whole internet is inhabited by this anti-woke fucking industrial complex.
But the few places you can see people pushing back, they say, no, no, man, he called black people cockroaches. - Yes.
And my brain is like, I don't think that's true.
I highly doubt, I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying my preliminary reaction is, I kinda highly doubt that this white professor who's been teaching for 20 years, just in a class said, you know, black people are cockroaches.
I just don't think that, that would be pretty intense.
Not impossible, but my priors are, Eh, really?
That doesn't seem right.
You'd like to verify before going down that road.
Yeah, exactly, because I want to be fair.
And that's one of those areas where it would be the easy way out for our side, just be like, yeah, look, turns out he actually called black people cockroaches.
It says right here in this report, that's one of the charges.
But like, if you look into it, it's this one's pretty gray.
It's pretty gray.
So it more goes in the category in my mind of, yeah, I bet you this guy is just kind of shitty and it pokes through here and there, but not in a way that's like super intense, just in a way that I'm sure black students are like, are you kind of dog inadvertently dog whistling right now?
So this is, all the classes are recorded, every single one.
And part of this process is them reviewing these recordings.
So here is the transcript of the recording.
Now he's talking about litigation and like nuisance lawsuits.
And he's kind of talking from the perspective of like a, you know, a big corporation dealing with it.
So here's the quote.
The fact that other plaintiffs see that one other plaintiff lost isn't a disincentive.
If it were, frivolous litigation would have ended long ago because lots of plaintiffs have been pushed to the wall and lost.
You don't hear about those stories in the media.
You hear about idiot people winning $1 million verdict against Subway for having 11.5 long sandwiches.
That's what makes the press, right?
That Subway lost.
Not that they win against this ridiculously frivolous case.
That wasn't in the media, only in the legal media, maybe, if you were paying attention.
And that's the problem.
If they win, no one hears about this.
They only hear about it if they lose.
And God forbid that, then all the cockroaches come out of the walls, they're thinking, right?
So this full quote that I just read you comes from his complaint.
OK.
I actually don't see the full quote in the investigation report.
So I'm a little wary of making firm claims because there it sounds like if you're talking about the kind of nuisance lawsuit that's like 11.5 inch Subway sandwiches.
There I got a side with him like that's I mean.
Yeah, I guess it's a little weird to say that from the like corporate perspective, but his reasoning is always like, hey, you have to get into the minds of the people who you're analyzing.
And so if you're going to say, hey, this Subway executive is thinking now all the cockroaches come out of the wall.
I don't really, I don't see that as that, you know, like I don't see that as that bad.
But imagine if the example he was talking about five seconds before that was civil rights litigation.
Yeah.
Someone suing their employer for racism or something, you know, like.
Yeah, that would be different.
Yeah, like then it's, you know, it's still probably like since he went to the subway thing, like I would give him leeway for like, well, OK, if his mind went to the subway example and then he's thinking, you know, cockroaches, he's talking about people just suing nuisance lawsuits.
Again, I disagree with all that idea that nuisance lawsuits are even a big deal.
Who knows what he was talking about just before that?
I don't see it referenced.
You know, it's weird that they don't have it in the Investigation report, like, I would think if it was really damning, they probably, like, would have included.
While there isn't the full, like, there isn't more transcript, what is in the report does seem more like maybe what I was saying, what I was speculating.
So here's a place where it's talked about kind of more fully.
Several students reported that during a January 23, 2020 lecture in the Civ Pro 2 course, Professor Kilbourne denounced racial minorities' participation in civil rights claims while discussing modern-day extortion theory.
Reportedly, Professor Kilbourne 1 elaborated on the growing practice of big corporations choosing to settle discrimination claims rather than litigate them in ways that students interpreted as stereotyping minorities and black people and implying to non-minority students that minorities use litigation only to obtain money.
And 2, referred to racial minority plaintiffs as, quote, cockroaches, and described white people associated with such efforts as being, quote, lynched, but then apologized to the class for using that term.
He reportedly did not apologize for the other two comments.
So that was in the allegations portion.
Now, as I've said, they don't put in the full transcript or anything.
And so that selection that I read you of the transcript, again, that's from Killborn's complaint.
So we could imagine that that'll be probably edited to his favor as much as possible.
In the review section, so where they actually looked into this, here's what the investigation report says.
So here's their analysis.
Review of a recording of the January 23, 2020 lecture revealed that Professor Killborn did, in fact, use the words cockroaches and public lynching during the lecture.
He apologized for the latter, but not the former.
More specifically, the recording of that lecture included the following.
Professor Kilbourn referenced a Jay-Z lyric, quote, he was doing 55 in a 54, and changed his manner of speaking when doing so to sound black, using African-American vernacular English to pronounce 54 as 54.
Nearly an hour later, when discussing media attention to situations in which corporations lose cases, but not when they win, and a particular case involving a racial minority plaintiff, Professor Kilbourn stated that, quote, then all the cockroaches come out of the walls.
So that's more like I was kind of speculating.
I still am a little suspicious that they didn't just include the quotes, you know, like, it feels weird to me.
But like, so if I'm trying to play Kilbourn's advocate, it's possible based on these facts That the case itself was about some bullshit, but it happened to be a racial minority plaintiff, but that wasn't important.
Like if it was a black person suing about a Subway sandwich or something, you know, like that would be like the most kind of malicious way that this report could be crafted.
But When I run that through my reality player in my head, I don't really actually see how that would have been how it came up.
You know, I think it's more likely.
I don't know.
It's still weird that they didn't just include the quotes.
So I don't know.
It seems weird.
So I understand being slightly suspicious of the fact that like, if these facts were really damning, like if the paragraph before the one I quoted you was, and so this person's suing for discrimination because they're black.
And then, you know, like, I feel like they would have included that.
Don't you think?
Yeah, I think so, but I think maybe what's important there, the additional context that the report gives that Kilbourn leaves out is taking on, you know, sort of that vernacular.
That's an hour before, but yeah.
But still, it's in the same sitting of a class, and I think if I were to, you know, perspective take from a student, I could see, you know, it's like that initial thing where you're like, okay, that's kind of weird.
We don't do that anymore, guy.
And then, you know, this next piece, it's sort of like poking at the same spot over and over.
And then you hear that lynching as the third one.
And like, yeah, OK, he apologized for lynching.
But let me get to the lynching one.
Yeah.
Yeah, go ahead.
No, I agree.
I think you're hitting on it, which has been my overall thesis here, which is it's a number of things that black students are probably like, you know, like it's probably a number of things.
So any one thing you're like, I could explain that away.
But like, Yeah, I mean, how many things do you get and then you put a racial epithet on an exam blanked out and react the way you do?
Like, it's about the whole confluence.
So, 40 seconds later, in reference to a bank executive, Professor Kilbourn said, quote, I'm not subjecting my corporate bottom line to that public lynching.
I didn't mean to use that word.
I'm sorry.
That's not the right word to use.
And an unidentified male voice then says, quote, I appreciate that.
Less than a minute later, this is a final bullet point here, less than a minute later, after Professor Kilbourne had gone on to lecture about modern extortion theory, a black student said Professor Kilbourne's opinion on minority plaintiffs was an overgeneralization.
Which Professor Kilbourn said is not true, but rather is an observation both he and large banks, like the one in that case have made, followed by a reference to Professor Kilbourn's own, quote, implicit biases.
That's interesting.
That feels uncomfortable to me.
So I want to point out a few things from this.
The fact that a student, and again, this is in the transcript, this is at the time.
That's important to keep in mind.
I know this is a lot to keep in everybody's head, but this is nearly a year before the test question.
So any story of, well, now these students, you know, they complained about this test question and then they found they were wrong about that.
So to double down, they go back and find all these examples.
Well, we have an audio recording, which they have a transcript of, in which you hear a black student pushing back in the moment.
Yeah.
And so that tells me, again, we are dealing with limited information, you and I.
But that tells me that black student heard something, you know, or maybe a lot of things.
Yeah.
And so if a black student felt compelled in the middle of this lecture or whatever to actually come out and say, hey, I feel like, you know, the way you're talking about minority plaintiffs is an overgeneralization here, you know, like they're not nuisance lawsuit people or whatever.
I guess the only thing I would say is that I think the implicit biases thing, I actually looked at that as maybe a little favorable to him.
Like if he's saying, So a black student's calling him out like, hey, I feel like you're overgeneralizing on minority plaintiffs here.
And he says, yeah, no, that isn't true that they're nuisance lawsuit people or whatever the fuck.
You know, that isn't true that they're always just doing nuisance lawsuits.
So he says that.
That isn't true.
But it's an observation both he and large banks, like the one in the case they're talking about, have made.
And then he references, like, that might be because of my implicit biases.
I don't know how to categorize that.
It feels to me like you're scoring some amount of woke points if you're like, oh, yeah, maybe that's due to my implicit biases.
But I don't know.
I wish it would have just given us the full quotes.
You know, that's what kind of bothers me about this.
Like, just give us that whole 10 minutes or whatever it is.
Yeah.
And then we could kind of read that in.
While I don't view the investigation report as some sort of conspiracy bullshit.
I don't.
I think that's insane.
But I also know that, you know, people are doing their jobs and they are going to write a report to emphasize the conclusions they come to, even if they're valid conclusions.
And they may protect those conclusions a little.
So, like, it just feels weird that they didn't include the thing.
But I also think, again, strong evidence is if a black student felt compelled to push back in that moment, long before any of this, long before you could say this was some conspiracy against him, to me this feels like, okay, yeah, you probably said some shitty shit in that lecture.
Yeah, and how quickly did he say lynching after that?
That is a word, you know, I'm not here to police like specific words that people are saying, but like I have never used that word to describe anything.
It's weird to me that that, you know, is something that that's such an evocative particular word that is tied to a particular period of time in a particular group of people where, I don't know that I would have ever said that to characterize what he's trying to characterize there, but.
Yeah, yeah.
That's one where I would put that in the category of, this dude's what, 40 or 50?
Mm-hmm.
Or white dude.
50, yeah, 51.
50-year-old white dude, that would be the kind of thing that I would, he apologized in the moment, so I'd be like, all right, yeah, you know, glad he's learning.
Working on it.
Yeah, I wouldn't.
Be like praising him overly for that, but that strikes me as yeah, bad choice of words.
He apologized in the moment.
He's lecturing for hours at a time.
Yeah, and I want to be fair about that too.
I understand that you don't always pick perfect words while you're speaking for hours and hours.
As we know.
As we know, there is still an element of that earlier piece where there's a part of my core that felt uncomfortable about it, where when the student spoke up and said, hey, this feels like, you know, this is an overgeneralization, I feel like The right move there could have been far more like validating as opposed to like, well, you know, yes, but also yada, yada, yada.
I think you could have taken the opportunity to be like, you're 100% right.
And that's, you know, the position that we see often in these things, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I think stronger language there could have been more helpful and then maybe would have felt less icky.
I agree, but I want to leave room for the fact that, like, we don't know that he didn't do that, actually.
So, you know, like, I just don't... It's definitely concerning, and black students have complained about it.
So, like, bottom line, they're complaining.
We need to hear their complaints and deal with the issue.
But he didn't include that portion of his quote himself, did he?
Regarding the overgeneralization.
He just really like focused on the cockroaches.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Yeah, if it was super the other way, maybe he would have included it in his transcript.
Right.
If it was like a staunch ally, I just feel like I'm more inclined to believe the characterization than by the report if he's not speaking up differently on that piece.
Yeah, no, I agree.
So here's what Kilborn does include, actually.
There was an email that this student sent after this class, and they said, Professor Kilborn, great discussion in class today.
My intention was to respectfully dissent rather than say I love you before dissenting.
Which is so relatable to me.
I'm sure someone was like, hey, bud, I love you, but like this is, you know, whatever.
Which, you know, does color like this interaction.
It goes on.
I was just showing my respect to you, though I disagreed with that part of the discussion.
I hope it did not come off as offensive.
Have a great weekend, best.
Kilbourne responded.
The love was quite welcome, as was the respectful dissent.
I don't think we so much disagree with each other as we were perhaps talking about slightly different things.
I don't mean to be heard as saying that my description of how Citi would react, CitiBank, how Swanson and her lawyer might react, or the incidence of patently frivolous litigation is a factual, universally applicable assessment of that case or the world.
Generalizing is not necessarily negative.
It's inevitable when we're talking about assessing an unknown situation, discounting a future likelihood, and helping a corporate defendant to assess a litigation scenario.
What I hope you understand is that my job is to prepare you to understand the litigation mindset of your clients or opponents, many of whom are likely to be business people who have to base their assessments on statistical likelihoods, i.e.
generalizations, and predictions about outcomes.
My 25-ish years as a law clerk, lawyer, and now law professor have exposed me to enough of these kinds of scenarios that my perspective, while not universal, fairly confidently represents the norm, that is, the most likely situation.
Might this case have been different?
Absolutely.
But again, we always have to responsibly generalize when making future predictions.
Which is one reason why those predictions are so often inaccurate.
But companies like Citi can't take the chance of being the headline-grabbing normal casualty of a litigation system in society with lots of fairly consistent problems.
Dissent away, and reminding me that it's not personal, you're not attacking me or my view, just expressing an opposing viewpoint is nice.
I am sometimes a bit fragile, and standing in front of a room of smart people talking about tough issues makes one quite vulnerable.
Well, I can see how that Zoom call turned into four hours.
Yeah.
Short email from a student and yeah.
And the final email back from the student is agreed.
The topic of embedded biasness within the legal system alone is quite challenging to discuss.
I would imagine particularly in front of a classroom full of analytical thinkers.
In my opinion, your practical and scholastic approach to instruction of civil procedure is well balanced.
I look forward to the semester.
So how does that interaction read to you exactly?
Pretty positive, respectful on both sides.
A little, I don't know, a little much from Kilbourne.
Really fragile is a good word for it.
Yeah, exactly.
Fragile and defensive.
When he said fragile, I think I laughed because for what's to come, I guess.
Exactly.
At least he's self-aware.
Yeah.
It's like so many of these pretty much always white men involved in these ruckuses.
If they could just take a second to be wrong, It went, but like, here's, here's what he does.
So on the scale of one to like Brett Weinstein or whoever the fucking worst is on, on this, there's a lot of them.
We'll get, well, we can come up with a hall of fame ranking as we go on in this podcast.
I like that.
I think he started pretty not shitty, but one thing I've noticed with some people is that certain people who have that fragility and arrogance to a certain extent, some of them are smart enough to get to the point where they do the like, apology I was wrong thing, but they still have to do it on their terms in a way that's always kind of obnoxious.
Yeah, they keep talking, right?
Yeah.
It could have just been period, best.
Yeah, like he's got a long paragraph of justifying his opinion.
It's like he isn't quite apologizing in a way that makes, it's always explaining rather than apologizing, which I can sympathize with.
Like when you think you're misunderstood, of course, it's hard to not want to just keep explaining and explaining.
Not saying that like this makes him evil or anything, but like that, I think that impulse And that defensiveness, that inability to kind of just take an L. Yeah.
And just be like, oh yeah, sorry about that.
You know, big bank, white people, they're gonna, you know, just validate, like you said, validate more.
Like, oh yeah, a city executive, they probably think that.
I didn't mean to suggest that's true.
That's just what that idiot would think.
Well, also, actually, let me point something out.
I wonder what made this student feel they needed to email.
To clarify their intentions, yeah.
Yeah, think about the environment of this classroom that would mean the student felt compelled to be like, hey, I think you're overgeneralizing about black people.
And however Kilbourne has acted thus far and then responded made this student feel like, fuck, if I...
Am I going to fail this class now?
Yeah, because that's one thing that Killborn cannot get through his head.
He takes so many interactions he has at 100% face value where he doesn't realize he is a fucking professor interacting with students.
Like, there are times where he'll be like, well, I know this person didn't have a problem with me because they sent me an email.
And you're like, well, okay, but like.
Power imbalance.
Yeah, there's a power imbalance.
There might be students who are going to be like a little bit kissy assy because they don't want to get in trouble.
They don't want to get a bad grade.
And I think it's your job as a person in power to recognize that possibility, you know, and you don't have to like think everybody's lying to you all the time, but maybe don't put forth as like ironclad evidence that like I have done a perfect job because no one has complained.
Yeah.
It's like, well, maybe they've wanted to, maybe they've kind of done it, but it's like this student where they, like, had to make extra sure they weren't, you know, trampling on your feelings too much.
Yeah, you can't really say that you know for sure what someone's motivation is behind actions like that in that sort of relationship dynamic.
Yeah.
So the next bullet point under the harassment heading: "During other Civ Pro 2 class sessions "during the spring 2020 semester, "Professor Kilbourne allegedly engaged "in racially biased conduct toward non-white students "when discussing topics about Black, Latinx, "or Middle Eastern culture.
"For example, when the topic of rap or hip-hop "would come up in class, it is alleged that Yeah, so those are interesting.
Wow.
Yeah.
So those are interesting.
So let me tell you what the school found regarding those.
OK.
So the first paragraph kind of just restates what I just read you, because again, this is lower in the report.
I don't know why they organized it this way.
But the only thing it adds, I'll just kind of add the last sentence here.
Kilbourne was dismissive of and insensitive toward black students in that Professor Kilbourne was particularly dismissive toward and would quickly disregard a particular black student with an African accent.
And there's a footnote on this.
to participate in class, but was not dismissive towards similarly situated white students, including others with accents.
And there's a footnote on this.
OAE attempted to connect with this student to gain further information and her perspective of this allegation.
The student did not respond to OAE's outreach.
Interesting.
So it goes on.
In both his written response and statements during his interview, Professor Kilbourn strongly and categorically denied assertions that he treated non-white students differently as a blatant lie and utterly preposterous.
Professor Kilbourn reported that in his teaching, he asks pointed questions, rejects incorrect responses, and challenges students who are repeatedly unprepared to participate in class discussion.
But that he does so for all students, and in the same proportion.
He indicated he seeks to hold students to demanding standards that are also charitable and supportive, emphasizing that he does so for all students.
He said he calls on students randomly at times, if no one volunteers when a question is posed, but vehemently denied ever addressing minority cultural issues toward a particular student because they were a member of such a minority.
In his written response, Professor Kilbourne wrote, I don't recall ever discussing topics about Black or Latinx culture at all.
As for the specific issue of how he addressed a student with an African accent, Professor Kilbourne identified the student on his own, said he speaks her language, which he believes to be French, and denied ever being dismissive of that student in any way, other than addressing incorrect answers if she provided one.
He also noted that the student enrolled in another one of his courses for Spring 2021 semester, which he viewed as evidence that she did not have issues with him.
To investigate the more general assertions about Professor Kilbourne's classroom comments, in addition to reviewing the January 2023 recording, OAE selected recordings of six additional lectures from the Spring 2020 Semester Civ Pro 2 class for review.
OAE's review of lecture recordings did not reveal any examples of Professor Kilbourne targeting students based on the substance of issues being discussed, nor any examples of dismissive behavior toward a student with an accent.
Such review was limited by the fact that the recordings contain audio only, not video of any classroom discussion that might reveal more about the exchanges between Professor Kilbourn and various students.
How does that land with you?
I feel weird about that one.
I understand how they're coming to their conclusions there, but I think that big piece at the end, there is no video to accompany the audio for that class is pretty important.
Yeah.
So this is interesting to me.
I, again, it's the kind of thing where I'm fine with the investigation being like, yeah, we can't really, you know, can't really substantiate this.
On one hand, my first impulse was like, okay, did they just randomly sample like, you know, barely any lectures?
On the other hand, how many lectures, long lectures is a semester?
Yeah, maybe it was like 25%.
Yeah, I know.
Six might be kind of significant.
I don't know.
I can see that being a lot depending on how the class structure is.
And so I think the fact that they didn't find, again, this report, which is probably going to try to emphasize any evidence they have against them, I think it might be telling that they didn't quote anything.
But I also think it would be weird for a group of students to come up with this out of nowhere.
I gotta say, body language is a lot, too.
You know, you can't see where he's looking, so that's something that students could feel like he's directing conversation related to those cases.
I also want to point out in terms of that female student enrolling in another one of his classes, I don't think that's indicative of anything.
not cold calling, if, you know, he's not saying somebody's name, you know, they're just raising their hand or, you know, he's kind of looking at a particular area in the room.
That's something the students would know and we would have no idea what's happening there.
I also want to point out in terms of that female student enrolling in another one of his classes, I don't think that's indicative of anything.
Really?
You don't?
I think it's that, you know, I have to take this class and and this is the one that works with my schedule.
So I guess I'm doing that.
Or that's the only one offered that semester and I don't want to have to wait, you know, another six months.
If anyone ever looked at my habits, if any teacher had an afternoon class as opposed to a morning class, they could have been literally a murderer.
And I'd be like, yeah, no, I'll go with that.
Front row, yeah, I'll be there.
What's my chances of being murdered?
Only 5%?
Yeah, no, I don't want to wake up in the morning, sure.
You're 100% right.
That's a good observation.
I also was going to emphasize, there's a dynamic that, this is a tough, nuanced dynamic, but I think it's pretty common in the case of, especially immigrants to this country, that they are often very hesitant to want to cause any fucking trouble.
They're already having a hard enough time sometimes.
And I could be, again, this is a generality, so this could be entirely inappropriate to this one case.
I don't know.
I'm just speaking of, I know this dynamic exists where There may be bystanders who are like, the way this person is being treated is not okay, but the person themselves, because they're intimidated, they're maybe, by the way, who knows what their life was before, or if they, you know, if they just don't feel like, I just don't want to rock the boat here, or for whatever reason.
They might not want to go with that.
They might just want to be like, I just don't worry.
I'm just fucking, I'm just trying to get through my classes.
Who cares?
You know, like I'm not going to, I'm not going to make trouble about this.
And it's an uncomfortable, it's a tough nuanced scenario because on one hand, if it was coming from a white guy like me, it could be seen as like white knighting.
And the person would be like, oh, you know, they're not, the fact that it's coming from other black students, I think lends a little more credibility to it where it's like, they might be observing this dynamic and maybe the person, For whatever reason, she doesn't want to talk to them.
She doesn't want to make trouble.
Maybe she disagrees.
Maybe she doesn't see it.
The fact that it didn't show up on any of the recordings, I don't know.
I think that is the kind of thing that probably would show up on a recording.
You hear her start to say something and he would interrupt or something like that.
Yeah, this is kind of sparking, you know, this reminiscing that I'm having of the episode that you did on DACA a long time ago.
You know, obviously it's a different situation, different group that we're talking about, and we don't know this female student's particular background or situation or anything.
But in that interview, you know, kind of really understanding what the perspective is from You know, a student who's under DACA within school and knowing that there is risk to maybe not them, they might be okay, but you know, they have a community, they have a family where they aren't protected in the same manner.
And that kind of fear in that particular case anyway, I think is very real.
And we don't, like I said, we don't know her particular situation, but I think that's something that's just really interesting.
Yeah, and here's another possibility.
Again, that's kind of why I made that comment earlier.
His taking stuff, evidence like, oh, well, this person said they were fine as like gospel truth, that means they're 100% fine.
Who knows what else this student has dealt with?
Maybe there's some worse professor that has the other section of the class and she's like, yeah, all right, this guy, I guess, you know, like you just don't know.
You absolutely do not know that person's experience, or maybe she's 100% fine, and none of the, you know, like, it's hard to know.
And he's right, yeah, yeah, who knows?
Yeah, the point is, the last thing that the rest of the world should be doing is fucking writing article after article from the absolute certainty perspective that this is all a witch hunt fucking scam.
Right.
That's completely inappropriate.
At best, you could say this is a gray area case here, But if that's the case, how about you leave it to the fucking faculty and the committee and the, like all the, this is just an issue that this school needs to work out with this professor.
That's all it fucking is.
It's nothing that should be front page fire.org news.
That's absurd.
Yeah.
So now let's get to what I think is probably the most important element of this, which is his response to criticism.
Sort of interesting stuff here in the report.
I'm not going to read all of it.
One footnote I just noticed that is a little bit interesting.
Again, it's just in all trying to be as fair as possible.
So the day of the exam, it says OAE received reports of concerns about the exam question from faculty A.
I already said that earlier, like faculty A was the first person to complain.
And so they had a Zoom meeting with OAE and it sounds like OAE kind of, you know, they discuss like, hey, this might not be great.
Also, like consider what's going on right now, kind of in the world, in the country, in the election and all that.
This is December 22nd.
So getting a little tense leading up to January 6th.
And he did his thing of like, well, you know, here's my reasoning and, you know, academic freedom, blah, blah, blah.
There's a footnote right after that regarding that meeting that says, OAE also clarified at that time that no first-hand formal complaints had been made, but that OAE was partnering with JMLS leadership in addressing concerns and informed Professor Kilbourn that further assessment may be necessary upon receipt of any first-hand formal complaints.
Professor Kilbourn acknowledged and encouraged OAE's efforts in this regard.
So I wonder if that kind of contributes to his feeling that this is some sort of unfair, like, gang up, like, oh, no one had even complained firsthand at this point.
And then what happens is this, you know, again, this black student organization gins up these complaints in his mind.
I think that could, again, possibly be what leads him toward that.
Yeah.
Even if you believe that.
The way he reacts is not great.
So he does his apology that I read.
And you know, his first apology before kind of a lot of this has, you know, pretty good.
I just learned question caused some distress.
I regret that.
I only know the vaguest details of the concern, but I wanted to reach out right away to express sympathy and readiness to talk with anyone who might like to share their concerns.
I care about all of you.
I feel terribly.
Anything I did might have caused anyone discomfort in the middle of my exam, etc, etc.
Reiterated his apology, I certainly did not intend to cause any student or group of students to feel distressed.
And if that happened to anyone, I'm really sorry for that.
So, you know, fine.
Pretty good.
Yeah, it seems fine to me.
That was also just, you know, kind of skimming through it.
So then two days later, that's when the administration and the chancellor get the letter from BALSA sent on behalf of a coalition of student groups.
Keep in mind, again, that considering their petition did kind of word it like he used the real word.
Who knows if some number of these BALSA students or anyone involved might be under the impression he did use the full words.
Again, being as fair as possible, like maybe that's motivating their concern.
Who knows?
But they sent that letter.
The letter recounts students' experiences during the exam.
So at least, obviously, those students know what happened.
You know, being flustered, needing to take several minutes before proceeding with the exam, needing counsel immediately after the exam, having heart palpitations, and feeling that Black students no longer belonged at the law school.
The letter also referenced what it described as other off-putting interactions between Professor Kilbourn and students that have left Black students and their allies distraught, mentally exhausted, and overwhelmed.
The letter requested various Changes that included Professor Kilbourn stepping down from all committee appointments, mandatory cultural sensitivity training for faculty and staff, new policies regarding offensive language in the classroom, and an open dialogue event during the Spring 2021 semester with Professor Kilbourn.
So that's kind of their demands, which by the way, as we've seen, that doesn't necessarily really mean anything because administrations are perfectly happy to ignore those when they want to.
I think this is a bit of a knowing nod, perhaps.
Professor Kilbourne eventually has appeared to have reviewed at least some of the BALSA letter, and he engaged in two communications with students who had signed the BALSA letter that led to complaints to OAE, both of which are highly pertinent to the present investigation.
Email about BALSA letter.
On January 4th, let's keep that date in mind there.
Professor Kilbourn emailed one of the students who had signed the BALSA letter.
As the investigation report, you know, maybe sarcastically points out, that means he at least read that part of the letter.
Yeah.
So he knows who signed it.
And January 4th, you'll remember, is before January 7th, which is when he had that Zoom conversation with student D and he said he hadn't seen it.
And student D's like, really?
Are you sure about that?
And then he gets defensive and is like, are you calling me a liar?
You call me a liar?
You know, twice he says that.
So paints a picture of how this fucking guy is reacting.
So January 4th, he emails a student and this is a pretty significant one.
Here's how a inside higher ed article that again is a fucking Puff piece for this guy because it's all an anti-woke propaganda campaign.
Here's how they characterize it.
Kilbourn said he sent the letter in question to a former student and mentee who is white because he was surprised and hurt to see her name on the BALSA petition.
He said the idea that this letter was retaliatory never crossed his mind because it was a private communication and the student was leaving the university.
Quote, I'm not criticizing you and it hurts that anyone would even dream that I would seek retribution against anyone about all of this.
All these people are and will always be welcome in my classes, Kilborn wrote in that email.
But a few of the familiar names on that letter, with not one person ever, ever reaching out to me, is painful beyond description.
I feel like my extended hand of help has been bitten off.
So how do you feel about that?
He is the victim.
Yeah.
It feels pretty guilt-trippy.
I don't know, like if I were the student, I wouldn't know how to respond to that.
Especially, man, yeah, for me, if I were in this situation and a professor reached out to me, I would have to fight so hard to not fall into that pattern of protecting their ego.
You know, in my response, even when I knew that what I was doing was how I felt and what I felt was right at the time by signing the letter to begin with.
So that's pretty unfair to put someone in that position.
So you're already having that reaction, and I've given you the best version possible, the version that's in the puff piece for him.
Yeah.
Now let me read— It's worse?
Yeah, it's worse.
Let me read—we have the full interaction, and it's—you're gonna love this, I think.
Okay.
This was a student who had requested a letter of recommendation the prior year, essentially.
How do I know that?
Well, because the email thread on which he responded about this BALSA letter was in the thread in which the student asked for the letter of recommendation.
Start a new email!
Specifically, yeah.
As if that isn't a very obvious attempt to say, uh, look what I've done for you and yet you're going to sign this.
This is how you repay me.
Fucking obviously.
The subject is letter of recommendation for SBA position.
I'm reaching out because I've decided to run for a position on the SBA executive board because of the move to online learning.
Candidates are now required to submit a letter of recommendation.
I've greatly enjoyed learning in your class and your teaching style, even with the challenges of switching to a new format mid-semester.
With that in mind, I would greatly appreciate if you could write my letter of recommendation for the election.
Please let me know if you have the time or interest to write this letter.
Thank you so much for your consideration.
Look forward to hearing from you.
And then he responds, happy to recommend you.
When do you need the letter and to whom should it be addressed?
Professor, thank you so much.
I greatly appreciate it.
I need to submit all my campaign materials by Friday.
However, names are listed on the ballot in chronological order of when candidate information was received.
The letter will be sent to the student body with my personal statement.
Also, this letter will be posted online for students to view.
However, all identifying information will be removed before it's posted.
Thank you again.
How's this?
That has the attachment.
And then, this is great.
Thank you so much.
Seems like I can't thank you enough.
I also wanted to take the time to note how much this means to me and my fellow students to have you as a professor.
You know, it's the kissy-assy stuff you do with a professor who's, you know, you're getting a letter of recommendation from.
Yeah.
Whenever I listen to you record lectures, it's very comforting to hear your words of encouragement and support and to know that a professor cares about a student's well-being outside of the academic environment.
Seems like my life has prepared me for uncertain times, and getting my undergraduate degree entirely online has certainly helped me during these times, but it means so much to know that a professor has extended the helping hand that you've made clear is available.
Also, as the first member of my family to even think about, let alone attend law school, your advice about course selection and enrollment has been very much appreciated and utilized.
Thank you so much for everything.
Best regards.
That's the last email of that.
And then he responds.
Yeah.
And so that is April 8, 2020.
He responds within that thread, subject, re-letter of recommendation, you know, January 4th.
That is so calculated.
Sorry.
Like this is... I knew you would love that.
Obviously it's on purpose.
So gross.
Keep in mind, this is a white female student.
So just to keep, you know, in terms of the like racial, you know, intimidation, it's true that it isn't a black student, but...
Well, I'll read the letter here, the, you know, email.
Within that thread, can't tell you how painful it was to see your name on Balsa's attack letter against me.
That question and that language were on the exam that you and your class took, and yet no one in the years I've administered that question has ever said anything.
I'm sure you know that I certainly did not intend to cause anyone distress, and that I am especially sensitive to the issues raised in that horrible, horrible letter.
Such a shame to see all of my efforts to offer comfort and encouragement, as you acknowledge below, only to be now vilified in the most vicious, cruel, and uncompassionate way.
I feel like my extended hand of help has been bitten off.
I'm not criticizing you, and it hurts that anyone would even dream that I would seek retribution against anyone about all of this.
All of these people are and will always be welcome in my classes.
But a few of the familiar names on that letter, with not one person ever, ever reaching out to me, is painful beyond description.
My heart is absolutely broken by all this.
It's interesting that he says, and it hurts that anyone would even dream that I would seek retribution against anyone about all this.
I'm actually not sure where he's getting that at this point in time.
Interesting.
Yeah.
So this is before the conversation, the Zoom call, like I already said.
I'm not really sure, like maybe he's hearing rumblings.
It's interesting what information we're not entirely privy to.
So here's how the student responds pretty promptly within 40 minutes it looks like.
"Professor, I'm sorry that you feel like your helping hand has been bitten off.
I didn't intend that in the slightest and I still very much value everything that you taught me as a professor, a lawyer, and a person.
However, as a white student with the privileges that come with that, is believing people of color when they say that actions or inactions have caused them pain or distress.
This year, that has been a constant source of stress for students and professors alike, this year also saw a racial reckoning on a global scale.
If students expressed concern, pain, or feelings of inhumanity, I can't ignore, negate, or deny those feelings.
Rather, as an SBA member and JMLS student, I felt it was my place to stand in solidarity with those experiencing those feelings.
I'm not the gatekeeper of what is right or wrong, or offensive or not offensive.
Students of color were detrimentally affected by this question, I cannot in good faith disregard that because of help that was extended to me for my own benefit.
As you mentioned, this question was on the exam that I took last semester.
An issue was not raised during that time, and that is part of the problem.
That I was able to read that question without much thought, without the reawakening of trauma, is part of why I signed that letter.
Because I am privileged enough to read over that question, I want to stand in solidarity with those that weren't able to read that question without issue.
Again, I'm sorry that you feel betrayed.
That wasn't my intention, and it is heartbreaking to think that I caused anyone such pain.
But when I say I stand in solidarity with the students of color, especially as a member of the SBA, I cannot ignore the students expressing feelings of pain and trauma.
Snaps.
I'm just over here.
Yeah, I feel like this is, once again, my nominee for the NASA intern award of the month for this case.
That's a really well-written and well-thought-out email response to this.
And I want to recognize, too, that, you know, like, my initial reaction, and probably just because of my personality, is more about, like, okay, how can I, like, how would I respond to this in a way to ease those hurt feelings and stuff like this?
But this student, in contrast, you know, still respectful, still perfectly kind, but standing her ground, and I find that so Admirable.
Oh, I love that because I was thought like, oh, this is so you like still being so conciliatory.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But she's even a step toward my direction because I would have been like, hey, this is highly fucking inappropriate.
No, she is balancing it perfectly.
She's balancing like whatever you like.
woman, right, and femme person is trying to, I guess, their model, right?
We don't have the ability to just be like, hey, you were wrong and you're being an asshole about it, right?
But I love it.
Like, it's just, it's moving.
Did he respond?
Yeah, I wanted to emphasize, too, my comment was not a judgment of you.
It was acknowledging, like, I, as a white dude, have that freedom to just feel like, hey, what the fuck, man?
Yeah.
And like, obviously, women in law.
- An email like that to you. - Exactly, yeah, totally.
Great point, that's why I pointed out it's a white female student.
I feel like that's pretty intentional.
Like you're trying to pick someone where the dynamic is gonna be as-- - More favorable.
- Intimidating as possible.
Yeah, totally. - Yep. - Kilborn responded, "Acknowledging pain did not and does not require attacking me very personally and cruelly.
I also acknowledged and expressed regret for the pain that question caused.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
I admire your support of your colleagues.
I support them too.
Making me into a villain is not a fair or effective pathway to healing and understanding.
Enough said.
We'll all learn from this.
That's the... Still can't take the L. Yep.
And here's another thing to keep in mind, again with his version of the story, which is always like, oh, we ended amicably.
It was a fine interaction.
Note that the complaint about this email was from Faculty A.
So she thwarted it and said, look at this.
Because it says back to the report, Faculty A referenced this email as an example of Professor Kilbourn reacting negatively to students because they spoke against Professor Kilbourn's reference to the racial epithet.
Faculty A emphasized that this was intimidating and threatening given Professor Kilbourn's position of authority.
Yeah, yeah.
So she's probably like, hey, this made me feel a particular sort of way.
Can you take a look at it?
And then they're like, oh, wow, yeah, this is inappropriate.
Yeah.
This whole situation is inappropriate.
And I'm going to raise concerns.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This, in my mind, is the most clear cut evidence of what the fuck are you doing here, dude?
Yeah.
He... Let's just put this into context.
There's students who write a letter.
Black students, BALSA, you know, write a letter.
And it's a harsh letter.
It pulls no punches.
It's direct.
But I don't see anything in it.
This has gotten so long and the letter is four pages.
I don't... I can't read you the whole thing, but...
There's not much that's like, fuck this guy, he's a racist piece of shit.
Like, a lot of it is like, here's why the N-word is more than just a word.
It's a lot of stuff about that.
There's some stuff directed at him, but it's mostly... Professor Kilbourn portrayed himself as a culturally unaware and insensitive professor as he intentionally and deliberately elected to place the N-word and the B-word in his question.
A careful and educational review of the language used in the question would have brought into consideration the problematic history of the word and its detrimental And lingering effects for the black community, mandating effective cultural sensitivity training would encourage Professor Kilbourne and other professors to reflect and foresee the effects of including these vulgar and traumatizing words.
Using these words is appalling.
Like it's, you know, it's four pages of, it's a little bit repetitive, honestly.
I would have edited it down a little bit, but whatever.
It kind of reemphasizes that a few times and it includes like the student's reactions.
But I, you know, again, I don't see much that's like a super unfair attack on him.
They say professors write their final exams meticulously, carefully, and deliberately each semester, and there's no place or situation in our school or education for n space b space to appear.
This was not an accident.
So I guess that's the kind of thing he's probably reacting to, like, like, oh, this was some deliberate racist thing.
I think, again, like we've said a few times, you just got to take the L. Like, you can still maintain, like, hey, I think it's a little harsh to say this was not an accident.
Like, yeah, I mean, it kind of was an accident.
Like, there's no way I didn't, like, think ahead of time, like, I want to cause harm.
Which, I don't know, like, even if I'm not expressing opinion one way or the other, I'm just saying, if you're Killborn, you could just, A, you could shut the fuck up and wait a week for this to be dealt with, you know, and so that you can actually, without going to the media, that's the main thing.
But two, you could even just address this publicly.
Like, you could address it in a conciliatory way.
You can reemphasize, like, again, I apologize.
I'm making amends in every way.
I think that you could defend yourself a bit, I think, in a way that's like, I understand that emotions are high, and that's valid, and I understand it.
I strongly disagree with the idea that this was any intentional choice of mine.
You know, like, you could defend yourself a certain amount.
And I acknowledge that, you know, it still caused harm either way.
Exactly.
You could do all that.
There's plenty of room.
This is what people like him can't understand.
You can just stick to your guns, so to speak.
You can just say, here's what I believe, here's who I am, here's what happened, in a way that isn't overly defensive and argumentative, that still acknowledges the pain of the other side.
Yeah.
But you can just leave the space for other people to be wrong.
In your opinion, you know, you can just say, well, all right, some of these students, I feel like they're going a little over the top, but I've said my piece.
They said their piece.
We'll see what the ministry at this point, there's been nothing.
Yeah.
They haven't even started the investigation at this point.
Like we'll let the chips fall where they may.
Yep.
And that's something, as someone who deals with online stuff, like, that is something that you need to learn.
The white male urge to jump to, this minority person disagrees with me, therefore the woke left is taking over the, you know, like, they jump to that conclusion so often.
They do that big old, ah, colleges!
Freshman orientation is the, you know, and it's like, just allow that people might be wrong.
You know, like people on every side of every issue, especially we're dealing with students.
They might go a little over the top in your opinion, but people like him, it's not.
And this is a classic thing with the freedom of speech thing.
They don't want freedom of speech.
They want freedom from any criticism ever.
Like they want to be fully understood as having been a good person trademark the whole time.
And that it was never, that was always unintentional.
And it was always, and anyone, even if you disagree, anyone who has that opinion of, well, I don't think it was unintentional.
I think you are, but okay.
Let that person be wrong.
They're a student, you're a grown-ass man.
But he didn't do that.
He sends an email, just to re-emphasize the context and then we'll finally be done with this part of it.
He sends an email in an email thread where this female student had asked for a letter of recommendation.
That is incredibly intimidating.
Yeah.
That is obviously someone Look, the school is still investigating.
Actually, sorry, they haven't even started investigating.
They're still looking into it.
You could call that, like, witness tampering, honestly, if this were a criminal context.
Imagine a criminal investigation has started, and you email somebody who's signed on to the other side, so one of the witnesses, essentially, and you're like, sure am disappointed, given that I gave you this letter of...
Absolutely, completely fucking inappropriate for a professor to do.
You absolutely deserve some form of discipline for that.
100%.
If you worked at Amazon, you'd just be fired.
Yeah.
Like five years ago.
But because you're a privileged white dude professor who makes a bunch of money, you're coddled and coddled and coddled.
And they eventually issue this long ass report.
By the way, so we'll get to the conclusion.
Let me just get to the conclusory sort of part here.
I already told you they didn't find him You know, quote-unquote guilty of the discrimination part.
But here, I'll read the final paragraph.
The evidence does not substantiate that Professor Kilbourne engaged in discriminatory conduct when he dropped a complainant from the Spring 2020 CivPro 2 course or when he imposed a participation grade bump participation policy for the Fall 2020 course.
However, the evidence does substantiate that Professor Kilbourn's harassing conduct has created a racially hostile environment for non-white students, given Professor Kilbourn's continuing conduct, particularly in response to criticisms of his December exam question.
Accordingly, the greater weight of the evidence substantiates a violation of Policy 1100-004, Non-Discrimination Policy Statement, which prohibits harassment based on race.
Recommendation based on our investigation, OAE recommends that to address Professor Kilbourn's policy violation, Professor Kilbourn partake in a series of individual training and coaching sessions regarding cultural competency before he returns to teaching in the classroom, which is currently not scheduled to do until the spring 2022 semester.
Seems fair.
What is the lightest possible punishment you can receive in this situation?
You know, like obviously no punishment.
No punishment or like, hey, say sorry.
Yeah, but like, hey, yeah, based on the weight of the evidence, and by the way, specifically emphasizing, it's not the fucking question.
It's not the exam question.
It's your response to it, particularly in response to criticisms of his December exam question.
Yep.
Doesn't get any more clear than that.
That was the issue, buddy.
So they didn't make this report public at the time, whatever.
They did do, their findings letter was public.
And that's kind of a summary of the report.
It's effectively, it has plenty of information in there.
I don't, I don't see it as like hiding anything to not publish the full report.
He says they wouldn't give it to him.
That That seems weird though.
Like, I feel like, I don't know if he's telling the truth or if they wouldn't have, I feel like, I don't know.
Don't you feel like he would be able to have access to that unless it was, yeah, I feel like he would have.
So, but we don't have any substantiation that they wouldn't give it to him.
That's just his word.
So I kind of feel like that might be wrong, but I don't know.
Similarly, let me read the last paragraph of the letter they sent him about this.
For these reasons, OAE has substantiated that conduct addressed herein was perceived as offensive toward non-white people, was objectively offensive, particularly because of Professor Kilbourn's overtly intimidating and threatening reactions to student-voiced criticism of his racially charged comments and exam question, took an emotional toll on non-white students, faculty and supporters of the non-white students, yeah, that's key, and supporters of the non-white students who felt threatened, And interfered with non-white students' learning experiences at UIC JMLS.
By a preponderance of the evidence, OAE has therefore substantiated conduct on Professor Kilbourn's part that was harassing based on race and constitutes a violation of the policy.
That's what they sent him.
Seems pretty fucking clear to me.
Yeah.
There's no confusion here.
That's what it was.
There's not based on the exam.
It's just not.
So everything after here, and even before then, he already knew this, but Consider how many times he made this about the exam question, the media blitz he's done where he's talking about how it's all about the exam question.
He is knowingly lying about that.
He knows that.
He's been notified.
He knows all this.
He's been talked to about it.
He's been given a full-ass fucking letter on it.
He knows it's not about the exam question.
He's a liar.
Yep.
Considering how willing he is to lie about that, I wonder, you know, maybe a lot of his interpretations come into question.
Maybe a lot of his reactions colored a different way.
Like my hypothesis is maybe this guy's a fucking asshole and probably deserve more punishment than this.
All right, folks, I actually have to cut in and call it there, even though this is already at like almost two hours.
I do want to give you a bit of a quick update as to what's going on.
So, you might know we had our QED trip, then took a little bit of mini vacation, except it's not ever vacation because I was working the whole time in France.
That was all great, except when we got back, I became really sick, which sucked.
Remy as well.
I had it worse than Remy, I think.
Remy's fine now, but I had a really, really bad week.
So that's why I think nothing's been out this week.
Compound that with this part three that we're kind of in the middle.
Part three in quotes that we're in the middle of here was five hours, over five hours of raw audio.
You've just heard almost two hours of edited audio and there's actually more.
So what was part quote unquote three became parts three and four.
So we'll call it here for this half.
I have to tell you folks, it just keeps getting more fun from here.
For real.
I cannot wait to get to the end of this one.
At least the end is in sight, so there are three more episodes.
I know it sounds like a lot, possibly, but trust me when I say you're going to fucking love them.
The next one gets into a little bit more of the kind of the the fallout the legal stuff why the fire.org is a piece of shit a little bit although there's there's plenty more of that in part I don't know five or whatever it is and also we go through more of that interview I played a little bit of and it goes so Off the rails in a great way that I've been kind of saving.
Then from there, we've got even more fun stuff up to the super secret ending that is so fucking good.
I cannot wait to bring you the last thing I found for this.
You are going to love it.
I promise you.
So I'll pause here and sign off.
If you're a patron, look for that next part very, very soon.
If you're a normie, I don't know, I'll probably delay it or something because I need to treat the patrons.
Let's face it.
Thank you so much for listening.
And I'll have a few more announcements about other random stuff at the beginning of the next part.
