WND Staff – A professor who grew up in communist Romania has revealed that he quit his tenured position at Columbia University in New York City because the Ivy League school is “on its way toward full blown communism.”
Prof. Andrei Serban, an award-winning director who taught in the theater department, recalled the “social justice” demands that prompted his move in a Romanian TV interview translated by a Romanian-American immigrant, the College Fix reported.
In one instance, he was told as the chairman of a faculty hiring committee that he could not chose a heterosexual married man like himself, even if that person was the most qualified for the job.
“I felt like I was living under communism again,” he said in the interview on Romania’s TVR1 on Oct. 26.
The TV host expressed incredulity several times in the interview at the state of the American higher education system.
In another instance, he was said he was pressured to admit a male-to-female transgender applicant who auditioned as Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet.”
Serban said his colleagues expressed displeasure with him stating that this person could not become Juliet.
It was the last straw, for me, he said, and he resigned, explaining he could not violate his principles.
The College Fix said Andy Ionescu, a native Romanian speaker who immigrated to the United States in 1999, translated the interview.
Ionescu said it likely was the first time Serban made his resignation public.
Columbia still lists Serban as an active professor, the College Fix said, and the university’s media relations and Serban did not respond to emails.
Serban said he was told by the dean of the art school that there were “too many white professors, too many heterosexual men.”
The committee should not choose someone like Serban, he was told, because he’s a heterosexual married man who has children.
According to his faculty bio, Serban is an accomplished theater and opera producer who served as the director of the Romanian National Theater and won a Tony Award.
SF Source WND Nov 2019