The images ’caused discomfort’ to students, prompting the French department to discontinue its use.
The Princeton Young Democratic Socialists of America released an open letter on Monday condemning “discriminatory materials” in the French-language program at Princeton University. A graduate student who was a teaching assistant for the course alleges that his position was jeopardized after he raised concerns to the department and that this “aggravated a general anxiety disorder.”
“The materials in question include a slide deck of personal adjectives used for the theme ‘classroom and classmates’ starting with several silverback gorillas and an image of King Kong, before presenting a picture of former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama,” the open letter states. The letter was sent to the chairman of the French and Italian department, as well as the dean of the graduate school and the dean of the faculty.
A photo included in the open letter shows part of a slideshow from a course, French 103: Intensive Beginner’s and Intermediate French, that has photos of gorillas described with different adjectives, such as “grande,” “petite,” “blonde,” and “gentil.” After the gorillas are described, there is a slide with a photo of the Obamas with the question “Ils sont mariés?” (“Are they married?”)
“The slides as shared with the media are incomplete and were released out of context,” a spokesperson for Princeton University told National Review in an email on Tuesday. “The complete set of slides represent two distinct instructional sequences in a language instruction course: one using gorillas and another using human celebrities.”
“Princeton’s Office of Institutional Equity & Diversity reviewed the slides late last year and found they did not violate the University policy on discrimination and/or harassment and did not warrant an investigation,” the spokesperson said. “Still, Princeton’s Department of French & Italian acknowledges the slides may have inadvertently caused offense and has taken the entire deck out of use.”
The materials “presented without clear educational value” have “deeply offended and caused discomfort” among students, the Princeton Young Democratic Socialists of America wrote. The student organization calls for the Department of French and Italian to “acknowledge and resolve the damage done” by the course materials. The letter has also been signed by student organizations, such as the Princeton College Democrats, the Black Student Union, the Alliance of Jewish Progressives, the Princeton Progressive publication, and Princeton Students for Prison Education, Abolition, and Reform, among other groups.
“In addition, there have been materials including the creation of ‘Chinese portraits’ which involved self-portraits as animals, instructions for students to debate whether France in the 1950s was more ‘ethnically homogenous’ than nowadays, and inappropriate jokes involving sexist stereotypes of blonde women’s intelligence,” the letter continues.
The open letter alleges that graduate student Hervé Goerger brought the course materials to “department leaders,” who advised him to “keep a low profile” and to “choose [his] battles” to ensure completion of the Ph.D. program.
Goerger told National Review in an interview that, when he was a teaching assistant for French 103 in the fall of 2023, he first raised concerns in an email to the course head, Johnny Laforêt, in September. Goerger completed his previous degrees in France before attending Princeton University as a Ph.D. student, according to his departmental website, and his academic focus is “queer zoopoetics (i.e. how queer literary culture dialogues with our understanding of animals), and more broadly on intersectionalities involving a literary approach to otherness.”
“I think the transition between six gorillas, King Kong and the Obama couple can be seen as problematic,” Goerger wrote in an email to Laforêt and the other course instructors on September 7. “Maybe when we want to illustrate or give examples we should either go 100% non-human or 100% human but not make an uncommented transition.”
“Well, if you find it problematic, you can use other examples. There are a lot other people in the slides other than the Obamas in the slides,” Laforêt responded. (Laforêt did not respond to National Review’s requests for comment by the time of publication. Laforêt was born and raised in Haiti, and his research interests include Haitian creole, French, and second-language acquisition.)
“I understand that it could be more personal to me than it is for another average teacher because my research is all about how we use animals to dehumanize people,” Goerger told National Review. “I almost never use humans and non-humans together in an activity that is not excessively rehearsed, trained, and critically thought about.”
As the course continued, Goerger considered more of the course material to be “problematic and useless” and unhelpful to students in developing proficiency in French. As an example, Goerger mentioned the “Chinese portrait” exercise for practicing imperfect conditional statements, which asked questions such as “If I were an animal, I would be . . .” or “If I were a season, I would be . . .” (“Portrait chinois” preexisted the Princeton course and is sometimes used for metaphorical descriptions of oneself.) Goerger said the exercise prompted students to use only the first-person subject and therefore did not adequately improve language proficiency.
Goerger forwarded the September 7 email to Murielle Perrier, the associate director of the French Language Program at Princeton, on November 27 and met with her on November 29. Goerger said that he raised questions about the “pedagogical usefulness” of some materials, and that Perrier disclosed that she did not make the material and did not know it was being taught. Perrier did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
“I was told ‘you need to choose your battles’ and ‘the goal for you now is to obtain your Ph.D. smoothly, and for that, you have to keep a low profile,’” Goerger said. “It was clear . . . I can’t voice my concerns about the racist content Princeton is teaching without my Ph.D. being compromised.”
“I was concerned [about my jeopardized position in the department] to the point that I did some psycho-something test because my heart was racing in the morning, had short breath, and I thought, why is it happening on a daily basis? Is it a body thing, is it a mind thing? Turns out that I aggravated a general anxiety disorder which induces panic attacks,” Goerger added.
Goerger filed a formal complaint to the university on November 24 over the course materials.
“The vice provost has conducted an initial assessment of the information provided and has determined that the Policy on Discrimination and/or Harassment is not implicated by this matter, which falls within the realm of academic freedom and excellence in pedagogy,” Cheri Burgess, director for Institutional Equity and Equal Employment Opportunity at Princeton, told Goerger in an email dated December 8.
Burgess mentioned that the information had been shared with the Offices of the Dean of the Faculty and the Dean of the College, which are “exploring ways to support inclusive teaching.” Goerger said that those offices never contacted him about the complaint.
“I am not against academic freedom and excellence in pedagogy, but this is not at all excellence in pedagogy. This is the opposite of that,” Goerger said. “The solution is very simple: you have to completely erase this course and remake it while being sensitive about the images.”