‘OFFENSIVE AND INSENSITIVE’

Purdue Northwest Chancellor Thomas Keon Urged to Resign Over Racist Joke

Thomas Keon muttered gibberish to mock Asian languages during a commencement ceremony earlier this month.

Purdue University Northwest Chancellor Thomas L. Keon is under pressure to resign by the school’s Faculty Senate Executive Committee over a racist joke he made earlier this month. The committee has released a letter calling for Keon’s ouster over a Dec. 10 speech in which he mocked a speaker at a commencement ceremony. After muttering a series of gibberish words, Keon said, “That’s sort of my Asian version of his” remarks, referring to the speaker who’d just left the podium. Keon apologized in a statement last week, admitting that his comments were “offensive and insensitive.” But two days later, the school’s Faculty Senate Executive Committee nonetheless voted to seek his resignation. “We asked him then, and later, for a response to our demand for his resignation; to date, we have heard nothing from him,” Dave Nalbone, a professor at the university and member of the committee, told CNN.