The professor, Megan Neely, issued the caution in an email Friday. Neely has since asked to step down from her role as director of graduate studies in the medical school’s biostatistics master’s program, the dean of Duke’s medical school, Dr. Mary E. Klotman, said in a letter to students Saturday.
Neely did not respond to email requests for comment Sunday. A university spokesman confirmed that she remained on the faculty as an assistant professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics.
Neely said in the email that two faculty members had come to her office complaining about students speaking Chinese in the student lounge and study areas. The faculty members wanted to identify the students, she said, in case the students sought to work with them in the future.
“They were disappointed that these students were not taking the opportunity to improve their English and were being so impolite as to have a conversation that not everyone on the floor could understand,” Neely wrote in the email. “To international students, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE keep these unintended consequences in mind when you choose to speak Chinese in the building.”
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She added that she had the utmost respect for international students. “That being said,” she wrote, “I encourage you to commit to using English 100% of the time” in a professional setting.
In February 2018, Neely sent a similar email, in which she acknowledged that living and studying in a foreign country was a “tremendous undertaking,” but relayed that faculty members were concerned about students speaking foreign languages in the department’s break rooms.
“Speaking in your native language in the department may give faculty the impression that you are not trying to improve your English skills and that you are not taking this opportunity seriously,” she wrote. “As a result, they may be more hesitant to hire or work with international students because communication is such an important part of what we do.”
In her letter, Klotman, the dean, apologized to students and said she had asked the university’s Office for Institutional Equity to conduct a “thorough review.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.