A professor at Palm Beach Atlantic University was fired this week for his lessons on racial justice, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Samuel Joeckel, an English professor at the private Christian school, said in a post on Instagram Thursday that the school had “made the disappointing decision to terminate my contract early.”
“They did this for a clear reason: my decision to teach and speak about racial justice,” Joeckel said. “The timing of this is not a coincidence as we are dealing with an “anti-woke” crusade from Governor DeSantis and other far-right politicians and activists. PBA was clearly influenced by this toxic political ideology.”
Students in Joeckel’s class discuss racial justice, read and analyze passages about it and write essays. He said he does not insert his personal views nor require his students to have a certain opinion, according to the Post.
Joeckel said he had been teaching the racial justice unit at the school for a decade and he never had any complaints about it until a month ago when a parent accused him of “indoctrinating” his students.
He became aware of the investigation when the school’s dean and provost waited for him outside his classroom to tell him that his contract would not be renewed until administrators analyzed his syllabi and powerpoint presentations to ensure he was not indoctrinating students. Joeckel noted that this meeting took place the same day Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was scheduled to deliver a speech at the university.
The school declined to comment to the Post about the matter, but the outlet obtained a memo sent by the provost that said she was seeking to “better understand the pedagogical rationale for including these extensive lectures in a Composition II class.”
Joeckel plans to take legal action against the university “to show PBA, and other institutions, that they cannot get away with this.”
