{"id":45702,"date":"2022-10-05T16:40:11","date_gmt":"2022-10-05T16:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/?p=45702"},"modified":"2022-10-12T14:07:54","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T14:07:54","slug":"boom-boom-suspended-ucf-vs-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/boom-boom-suspended-ucf-vs-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"Boom, boom: Suspended UCF VS. Racism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Boom, boom: Suspended UCF instructor claims disturbing \u2018racism,\u2019 Nazis & corruption.<\/div>\n
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‘All of these were retaliatory for his opposition to the racism by UC<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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According to\u00a0Scott Launier<\/strong>, he witnessed a disturbing amount of racism at the University of Central Florida.<\/p>\n

\"Home<\/p>\n

But when he tried to sound the alarm, Launier said he lost his job as a UCF instructor.<\/p>\n

According to UCF records, though, Launier\u2019s contract was not renewed shortly after he was suspended for calling his fellow colleagues Nazis.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit and school documents released from a Florida Politics public records request depict two different sides to the breakdown in their relationship.<\/p>\n

Launier, whose contract wasn\u2019t renewed beyond August 2021, sued UCF late last month in Orange Circuit Court. He had previously served as president of the\u00a0United Faculty of Florida\u2019s UCF chapter\u00a0from 2015 to 2020.<\/p>\n

In his lawsuit, Launier said he \u201cheld various positions and titles, which provided him an excellent vantage point to observe UCF\u2019s unlawful employment practices. Launier observed numerous acts of racism by the administrators who benefited from such discrimination by promoting themselves at the expense of nonwhites.\u201d<\/p>\n

Launier said he planned to speak out publicly about the institutional racism he saw.<\/p>\n

On July 29, 2020, Launier announced he was presenting on Zoom to talk about \u201ccorruption and institutional racism at UCF.\u201d He sent the link to as well as UCF leaders. Launier\u2019s lawsuit did not cite specific examples of what Launier believed was racist at the school.<\/p>\n

His Zoom talk announcement set in motion a series of events, Launier claimed.<\/p>\n

In September 2020, Launier said he was notified he was suspended for 10 weeks, and then ultimately his contract was not renewed, according to his lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these were retaliatory for his opposition to the racism by UCF,\u201d Launier\u2019s\u00a0lawsuit said.<\/p>\n

But UCF records said Launier was suspended because he emailed three UCF faculty members on Sept. 25, 2020, sending them a link to his personal website where Launier posted personal attacks against them. Launier wrote the three professors \u201cpose as leftist liberal faculty in message but in action implement Nazi and KKK desires\u201d on his website.<\/p>\n

Launier\u2019s email to the three faculty members ended with the words \u201cboom boom!\u201d which UCF called \u201cboth harassment and (a) veiled threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cReferring to one\u2019s colleagues in ways indicating that you disapprove of their actions is one thing; to claim without evidence that their behavior or actions align them with Nazi and KKK desires is something completely different. It is incongruous with the university\u2019s experiences with these faculty, potentially slanderous and decidedly inappropriate, and it will not be tolerated by a UCF employee,\u201d UCF Arts and Humanities Dean\u00a0Jeffrey Moore<\/strong>\u00a0wrote in a Sept. 29, 2020 letter to Launier informing him of unpaid suspension.<\/p>\n

UCF Police had also been notified of Launier\u2019s words to the three faculty members.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t the first time Launier had faced problems at UCF. He received a letter of reprimand in 2018 for not responding to students\u2019 questions and not providing course materials during the first weeks of the semester. Launier told UCF he needed to prioritize better and had fallen behind with classes, according to the reprimand letter.<\/p>\n

Launier, 52, had been paid $58,455-a year as an associate instructor and worked at UCF since 2007<\/p>\n

UCF doesn\u2019t comment on pending litigation and typically also does not speak about personnel issues, said spokesperson\u00a0Mark Schlueb<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Launier is represented by NeJame Law. His attorneys did not respond to messages for comment when Florida Politics sent the school records that hadn\u2019t been mentioned in Launier\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boom, boom: Suspended UCF instructor claims disturbing \u2018racism,\u2019 Nazis & corruption. ‘All of these were retaliatory for his opposition to the racism by UC According to\u00a0Scott Launier, he witnessed a disturbing amount of racism at the University of Central Florida. But when he tried to sound the alarm, Launier said he lost his job as Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[505,1550],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45702"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45702"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45714,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45702\/revisions\/45714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}