10 Apr 2021
A federal judge recently ruled a University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine student, who was suspended for questioning the validity of “microaggressions” at an academic panel discussion, may move forward with a lawsuit against the school for allegedly violating his First Amendment rights.
In 2018, Kieran Bhattacharya, then a second-year medical student, attended a panel discussion hosted by several UVA professors that dealt with the topic of how “microaggressions” impact the practice of medicine. Apparently concerned with how the standard for “saying a microaggression” might apply, Bhattacharya questioned how it is possible the “person who is receiving the microaggressions somehow knows the intention of the person who made it,” adding, “a microaggression is entirely dependent on how the person who’s receiving it is reacting.”