The voice mail Karen Fang received last week alarmed her — and alarmed many others when she shared it on social media.
The caller, who identified herself as a “concerned American,” was apparently trying to reach someone else at the University of Houston, where Fang is a professor of English. It’s unclear who the target was, but presumably someone else with an Asian last name, whom the caller assumed had no right to teach or be in the United States. The caller said she was reaching out after having learned that the professor she wanted to reach had been educated in Shanghai. (Fang’s degrees are from the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University.)
The caller says she is a “loyal citizen of the United States” who was alerting Fang (or whomever the real intended recipient of the call was) that she had called the president’s office at Houston to report her concerns that these Asian professors may not be legally in the United States. The caller asked how the person she thought Fang was could “be a permanent fixture” at a public university. “How can you teach loyalty or promote patriotism?” the caller asked…