African-American Professor at Columbia Charged With Assaulting a White Woman During an Argument About White Privilege

Lionel McIntyre, Nancy and George Rupp Associate Professor in the Practice of Community Development and the Founding Director of the Urban Technical Assistance Project at Columbia University, was arrested on assault charges after an altercation in a bar near the Columbia campus. According to police reports, Professor McIntyre was involved in a heated discussion about race and white privilege with two white patrons. Witnesses said McIntyre shoved Camille Davis, a production manager in the theater department at Columbia who is white, and then punched her in the face.

The New York Post quoted Professor McIntyre as stating after his arraignment that “it was a very unfortunate incident. I didn’t mean for it to explode the way it did.”