Mr. Horowitz bases half of his profile on Professor Parmar on the unsubstantiated allegations of one student, who claimed that Professor Parmar discriminated against white students.  (297-99)

This student’s allegations first appeared in an article in the New York Sun.[1]  When the article was published, Professor Parmar, her students and most of her colleagues in the Brooklyn College of Education disputed the students’ allegations. More than 30 of her students sent a letter of support to the administration that provided a fuller picture of Professor Parmar’s teaching style.

Here is an excerpt: 

We contend that our voices in this classroom were heard and encouraged, regardless if Professor Parmar agreed or disagreed with us; class participation was worth 10 percent of our overall grade as indicated in the syllabus, and verbally conveyed by Professor Parmar throughout the course as a reminder. We also feel that the grades we received were the grades that we deserved based on our intellectual performance of what was required of us; we were not slighted in our grades because of any contradictory political views. Professor Parmar challenged our views and sought further inquiry regardless of where she personally stood on our positions.

Also, 35 of Professor Parmar’s colleagues in the Brooklyn College School of Education sent an open letter to a professor who was quoted in the New York Sun article attacking Professor Parmar and the college.  The letter condemned the professor for defaming Professor Parmar’s character and the School of Education. The authors cc’d the CUNY chief administrators and board of trustees. 
Here is an excerpt from the letter:
           
[W]e want to express publicly our contempt for your attacks on a colleague, for the unsubstantiated claims and innuendoes you have made that the School of Education is imposing an ideological litmus test on students, and for your failure to engage any of us, other than in an adversarial role, in discussions about the issues.

Mr. Horowitz claims that Professor Parmar “teaches…that proper English is the language of white ‘oppressors.’” (296)

This claim is also based on the allegations of the student in the New York Sun article.  The student is quoted as saying that Parmar “repeatedly referred to English as a language of oppressors and in particular denounced white people as the oppressors.”[2]

Not only were the claims of that student never verified, “that student and another one were subsequently accused by the dean of the education school of plagiarism and were given lower grades as a result,” as the New York Sun article notes.[3]

Moreover, the phrase “denounced white people as the oppressors” is taken from a piece by bell hooks, an award-winning, and highly respected scholar on educational issues, who was the author of one of many assigned readings for the course.  It comes from hooks' response to a poem by Adrienne Rich, in which hooks writes:  “One line of this poem that moved and disturbed something within me:  'This is the oppressor’s language yet I need it to talk to you.'”[4]