Another journalistic mishap recounted by John Corry in the American Spectator, February 1998:

Linn Washington, Jr., a journalism professor at Temple University, wrote a column for the Progressive Media Project in Madison, Wisconsin, that was distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune. Washington wrote that when he was a freshman at a "Midwestern university, an anthropology professor in her first lecture declared that black people have the remnants of monkey-like tails," and that she "matter-of-factly told the class that she would have ordered me to drop my pants to display my anthropoid anatomy," but she thought it might make the female students uncomfortable. Washington also wrote that he got "the top scores on both the midterm and final," but that the professor had failed him in the course because she "couldn't hide her racism." He said he had protested this to the "head of the anthropology department, a Kenyan," but that the Kenyan declined to intervene: He wanted to avoid the appearance of "siding with me because we both were black."

After the column was published, Balint Vazsonyi, a senior fellow at the Potomac Foundation, wrote to the author and asked him for the names of the Midwestern university, and of the professor who said that blacks had vestigial tails, and of the department head from Kenya. Professor Washington did not reply at first, but Vazsonyi persisted, and finally got an answer. He wrote about it in a column in the Washington Times:

Professor Washington did not provide any details. He wrote that the offending professor would be very old, the Kenyan department head's name he did not remember, and both the Midwestern university and his grade were "moot."

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