E-mail Attacks Kim’s Race

Just four days after Harvard Medical School professor Jim Yong Kim was selected as the 17th president of Dartmouth College, a popular Dartmouth daily e-mail update sent a message to approximately 1,000 students about Kim’s appointment that was laden with derogatory racial slurs.

The “Generic Good Morning Message” (GGMM)—a list-serve administered by six students that is not affiliated with the college—sent an e-mail about Kim that directly attacked his Asian origins.

“Yesterday came the announcement that President of the College James Wright will be replaced by Chinaman Kim Jim Yong...It was a complete supplies,” the e-mail began.

The e-mail repeatedly attacks Kim, who is actually of South Korean heritage.

“Unless ‘Jim Yong Kim’ means ‘I love Freedom’ in Chinese, I don’t want anything to do with him,” the e-mail stated. “Dartmouth is America, not Panda Garden Rice Village Restaurant.”

The e-mail generated an immediate backlash from both students and faculty at Harvard and Dartmouth.

Kisuh Jung, a sophomore in Dartmouth’s Asian Christian fellowship, said that students were outraged when the e-mail went out.

“I think everyone acknowledges that this is a very serious offense,” Jung said. “It is an embarrassment; it is not indicative of the student body’s opinion towards our new president in any way.”

Kim expressed understanding in an e-mail addressing the incident sent out yesterday morning to all students at Dartmouth.

“I want to ensure that the student who wrote the e-mail understands the enriching role that people of diverse backgrounds will play in his life,” Kim wrote.

“But I also don’t want this lapse in judgment to limit his prospects for the future. Dartmouth students are very talented, but we all make mistakes—especially when we are young,” Kim added.

Allen Yang ’11, an officer in the Harvard-Radcliffe Chinese Student Association, applauded the choice of Kim and the response by the Dartmouth community.

“I think the message was written in poor taste,” he said. “But I have faith that the Dartmouth community knows that this sort of joke is just not as effective in this age of diversity.”

On the day the e-mail was sent out, interns from Dartmouth’s Pan Asian Council and representatives from the Inter-Community Council, Diversity Peer Advisor interns, and a member of the GGMM held an emergency meeting to discuss the fallout from the e-mail.

While the GGMM writer who sent out the controversial e-mail remains anonymous, GGMM writer Courtney A. Davis apologized for the incident.

“The students of the Generic Good Morning Message list-serve take full responsibility and apologize for the inappropriate and insulting nature,” she said.

Jung said that he hopes that this incident will be resolved by the time that Kim formally takes office this summer.

“We will do our best to welcome him in light of this incident, and I think he will come to understand,” he said.