Stephanie Mckellop, History Teacher Who Calls on Black Women, Not Male Students, Becomes Latest Culture War Battle

Related Link At Penn, sinking into the muck of Trumpian discourse By Jonathan Zimmerman

After a teaching assistant at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania tweeted about a strategy to encourage classroom participation by minority students, the tweets sparked a massive online clash with conservative news outlets and many Twitter and Reddit users calling for the assistant to be fired while other academics rallied to the assistant’s defense.

Stephanie McKellop, a Ph.D. student and teaching assistant who studies marriage and family, has since set their Twitter account to private, but archived copies of the tweets were posted online and quoted in news stories. (McKellop uses they/them pronouns.)

“I will always call on my Black women students first. Other POC get second tier priority. WW come next. And, if I have to, white men,” McKellop tweeted on Monday, using abbreviations for “people of color” and “white women.” 

McKellop added in following tweets that they learned that strategy from a professor in undergrad. “In normal life, who has the easiest time speaking, most opportunities? Flip it,” McKellop tweeted. “The classroom is the place YOU get to control social setting.”

Alex Jones’ InfoWars, a conservative website that peddles conspiracy theories and nutritional supplements, on Friday called the strategy a “discriminatory practice,” noting that Penn president Amy Gutmann has been silent on the issue and called on readers to contact the university leader to ask “If she supports open discrimination against white people in her classrooms.” Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson, who has almost 750,000 followers on Twitter, posted a story about McKellop that said her strategy was, “Also known as racism.” ...