It's not nice to pick on someone who's made a few mistakes in her life–but how many mistakes does incoming Boston University assistant professor Saida Grundy get to make before the university starts wondering why it hired her?
First, there was the bizarre series of anti-white, anti-male Twitter comments, all tweeted by Grundy, who is black, made only this past April, after Boston University hired her to teach sociology and African-American studies starting this fall. They included such remarks as:
"why is white america so reluctant to identify white college males as a problem population?"
"in other words, deal with your white [expletive], white people. Slavery is a *YALL* thing."
She also tweeted her dislike for Republicans, exemplified by the gender-transitioning Bruce Jenner, who has admitted traitor-to-his-Hollywood-class membership in the GOP:
"so when bruce jenner wants to offload some of that white cis male privilege, i'd be happy to take it off his hands for him…oh wait."
Oookay, professors get to say what they think outside the classroom–although Boston University president Robert Brown hastened to distance the university from Grundy's remarks:
"I do not say this lightly or without a great deal of consultation and soul-searching," Brown's letter reads. "I understand there is a broader context to Dr. Grundy's tweets and that, as a scholar, she has the right to pursue her research, formulate her views, and challenge the rest of us to think differently about race relations. But we also must recognize that words have power and the words in her Twitter feed were powerful in the way they stereotyped and condemned other people."
Then Grundy was accused of trolling a white rape victim in a Facebook comments dispute earlier this year:
“^^THIS IS THE [same expletive as above] I AM TALKING ABOUT. WHY DO YOU GET TO PLAY THE VICTIM EVERY TIME PEOPLE OF COLOR AND OUR ALLIES WANT TO POINT OUT RACISM. my CLAWS?? Do you see how you just took an issue that WASNT about you, MADE it about you, and NOW want to play the victim when I take the time to explain to you some s**t that is literally $82,000 below my pay grade? And then you promote your #whitegirltears like that’s some badge you get to wear… YOU BENEFIT FROM RACISM. WE’RE EXPLAINING THAT TO YOU and you’re vilifying my act of intellectual altruism by saying i stuck my “claws” into you?”
Well, a friend of Grundy explained to Boston.com that Grundy hadn't read the white woman's full comment–and so wasn't aware of her rape-victim status when she blasted about those "whitegirltears."
Oookay, again. Sometimes our passions get the better of us.
But now there's this, reported by the Boston Herald:
Grundy used the identity of a Virginia woman in a jealous fit over a man in late 2007 to create online accounts in the woman’s name, including one on an adult website for people looking for trysts, according to a police report obtained by the Herald under a Freedom of Information Act request.
Grundy got one year of probation after pleading guilty to malicious use of telecommunication services, a misdemeanor, according to online court records and Dan Dwyer, the court administrator at Washtenaw County Trial Court in Michigan. Two felony charges, identity theft and using a computer to commit a crime, were dismissed.
The cyber harassment took place in December 2007 when Grundy was at the University of Michigan, where she earned a master’s degree in sociology and a doctorate of philosophy in sociology and women’s studies in 2014.
***
During an interview with detectives at her home in May 2008, Grundy said she had never met the victim but “this was a jealous thing regarding another man,” according to the police report.
Grundy had stopped seeing the man when she left for graduate school but they “started seeing each other again” in December 2007, and she suspected the woman and he “were back together,” the report said.
“I was crushed and hurt, I had a lot of stress and jealousy, I wanted to do something, so I made a profile for (her) on an adult website,” Grundy said, according to the police report. The website, fling.com, is for adults looking for trysts, the report said.
Grundy said she downloaded photographs of the victim from the man’s email, telling the cops she got into his account by guessing his password. Grundy also admitted that she created other online accounts in the victim’s name “just to annoy her” and so “random junk mail” would be sent to her.
Grundy sure loves her some social media!
Three's a charm, but not necessarily:
In a statement Wednesday night, Boston University said: “A number of years ago, when she was a student at the University of Michigan, Dr. Grundy made a mistake. She admitted the mistake, accepted the consequences, and brought closure to that case. Eight years later, we do not see any reason to reopen it.”
Well, maybe four's a charm. The ever-patient Boston University administrators must be wondering what will be the next electronic adventure of Grundy's to surface in the news. Something on Pinterest, maybe?