Illustration by Ben Exler. This investigative article originally appeared in The Towerlight on March 4, 2010. It should be noted that a report at The Towerlight’s Web site broke the story on the evening of March 1, after which coverage from numerous local news outlets, including the Baltimore Sun, WBFF, WJZ and WBAL-TV followed. The author was also invited on WBAL-AM, where the story dominated a day of discussion, to recount the facts of the investigation on March 3.

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One word cost Allen Zaruba his teaching career at Towson University.

Zaruba, a professional artist and adjunct art professor who has taught at the University for 12 years, was fired last Thursday after being reported to the provost’s office for using a racial slur in class.

Zaruba was lecturing in his Visual Concepts class last Monday. The class was discussing a textbook he called “very politically incorrect,” “Themes of Contemporary Art” by Jean Robertson and Craig McDaniel. While reviewing a chapter about identity and the body, Zaruba referred to himself as “a nigger on the corporate plantation.”

As soon as the words came out of his mouth, Zaruba said, he regretted them. He contends, however, that the phrase was not directed at anyone other than himself and was not meant to be racially offensive.

“I am not a racist. I never have been. I’ve been raised overseas and in other cultures. It just absolutely kills me,” he said in an interview Sunday, later adding that he serves in the prison ministry, teaches Sunday school and that his stepfather was a black man and he “loved him dearly.”

Maria Bernier, a sophomore studio art major who was in the class, spoke highly of Zaruba and said the remark was not out of character for the professor, and was not intended or interpreted by much of the class as discriminatory.

“He’s very honest in his descriptions, and sometimes when he describes things, he uses words that I guess a lot of people would find … offensive,” she said. Read the rest of this entry »