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Following is an open letter that I sent to Occidental College in response to its refusal to discipline a student who told others that all Asians must die for spreading the Corona virus. I asked the president and the board of trustees to resign, but no response from them so far. Would it be possible to take direct action against the college?
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Dear Dr. Harry J. Elam, Jr., Sir:

I am asking for your resignation from the presidency of Occidental College.
Your defence of genocidal racism with pious references to the first amendment right to free speech places you beyond the pale of polite society.

I have already expressed my outrate in an open letter to Occidental College; the only response that I have gotten was that it cancelled the ticket that it had created to handle my complaint.

On the eve of his assassination, President Abraham Lincoln was concerned that Southern racists would employ free speech rhetoric to justify black slavery. In fact, his assassin claimed to have defended the freedom of speech by assassinating the president.

Both Jefferson Davies and John Calhoun justified the states’ rights doctrine enshrined in the Tenth Amendment, basing their defence of Southern racism on the First Amendment. The Bill of Rights was, ipso facto, an instrument of white supremacy in the early years of the American republic.

President Elam, you heaped insult upon injury by quoting the First Amendment to defend an overprivileged undergraduate who advocated the complete extermination of the Asian people as a race, blaming them for the current pandemic. As an Oxy alumnus, I take personal offence at your making fools of all Asian people.

You ought to have contacted the FBI and handed the potential terrorist over to the authorities for interrogation. The least you can do now is release the name of the student and make an official statement to the effect that she would never be allowed reenroll to finish her degree at Occidental. But there is the issue of legal liability, you might add. As I told the editor in chief of Korea Daily today, nobody in right mind would sue Occidental College for disciplining a student who goes around saying that all Asians must die. Please spare me the free speech crap – you are just fucking with the Asian American community.

Your resignation alone won’t solve the problem per se. The Board of Truestees of Occidental College should also be replaced by a more diverse group of people to better reflect the ethnic composition of Southern California. Your resignation will be a step taken in the right direction.

Sincerely,
Seung Kyun Joseph Mok (Oxy Class of ’04)