Colleagues Demand Law Professor Who Wore Blackface Resign

Nearly two dozen colleagues of a law professor at the University of Oregon who wore blackface as part of a Halloween costume are demanding that she resign.

"It doesn't matter what your intentions were," says the letter tweeted by UO Law Professor Elizabeth Tippett. "It doesn't matter if it was protected by the First Amendment. "Blackface is patently offensive. it is overtly racist. It is wildly inappropriate.

"It reflects a profound lack of judgment. There is no excuse."

An Open Letter from members of the Oregon Law faculty calling for colleague's resignation. pic.twitter.com/SUnqicSg9o

— Elizabeth Tippett (@TippettLiz) November" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://twitter.com/TippettLiz... 2, 2016

The professor - identified as Nancy Schurtz - is a member of the law school's diversity committee and served as it's co-chair and then chair.

Her decision to wear blackface to an off-campus Halloween party on Monday is being investigated by the university.

Her decision was "a stupid act and is no way defensible," University President Matthew Schill said in a statement Wednesday. "We condemn this action unequivocally as anathema to the University of Oregon’s cherished values of racial diversity and inclusion."

Schurtz sent a letter to students apologizing and explaining what she did, according to KEZI - a local television news station in Eugene.

"I chose my costume based on a book that I read and liked—Black Man in a White Coat," she wrote, according to the station. " I thought I would be able to teach with this costume as well (or at least tell an interesting story). When I asked my daughter who is at Brown Medical School the demographics of her medical school class, she said “they do not give those statistics out mom”, but later when she asked the administration, they said there was _not one black male _student in the class.

"She and others were outraged. She was able to get the administration to assign a portion of this book (the one where the black medical student was thought to be the janitor) out to students. I am sorry if it did not come off well. I, of all people, would not want to offend."

It's not the first time that racism has been on the university's agenda. Earlier this fall, it voted to rename Dunn Hall, which had been named for Frederic Dunn who had been both a former classic professor at the school and a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

The school is still deciding what to do about Deady Hall, named for Mathew Deady, who was one of the university's founders. And an outspoken proponent of slavery.

In a letter earlier this year, Schill laid out some of the problems confronting the university when it comes to race.

"Only 2 percent of our students are Black or African American; among the members of our tenure-track faculty, the proportion is only 1.6 percent," he wrote.

"Neither statistic is acceptable. We cannot and should not hide behind the defense that the state of Oregon has a comparatively small population of African American residents. Instead, this fact should cause us to work harder to recruit African American students and faculty members to the university and then, once here, make them feel included and part of our community."

Photo University of Oregon