University of Michigan Won’t Investigate The Renowned Composer Who Showed Class ‘Othello’ Featuring Laurence Olivier After Students Claim Racism

The University of Michigan has determined that it will not open a formal investigation into a music professor after he showed students in his composition seminar the 1965 film, “Othello,” which features actor Laurence Olivier in blackface.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reported that Professor Bright Sheng, the Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan School Of Music, Theater, and Dance, would not face a formal investigation after playing the film to highlight how opera composer Giuseppe Verdi had adapted Shakespeare’s “Othello.” Following anger from students, Sheng apologized and agreed to step away from teaching the seminar.

“While it remains discouraging that Sheng has ‘stepped away’ from teaching this semester, Michigan’s decision not to launch a formal investigation into a professor’s course content was the right one to make. Such investigations produce profound chilling effects inimical to a university’s role as a marketplace of ideas. FIRE hopes that this controversy over Sheng’s protected expression will signal to Michigan faculty and administrators that it’s time for the university to make a serious effort to protect and defend faculty members’ First Amendment rights and academic freedom,” FIRE wrote.

As The Daily Wire previously reported, on September 10, freshman Olivia Cook attended Sheng’s composition seminar. The course that year was going to analyze the works of William Shakespeare, and Sheng’s first class featured the 1965 film “Othello,” which featured actor Laurence Olivier wearing blackface. Sheng told The Michigan Daily that he showed the film to highlight how opera composer Giuseppe Verdi had adapted the play. Sheng told the outlet that cross-casting happens regularly in opera and didn’t see Olivier’s performance “the same as the minstrel performances which did degrade African Americans.”

“I thought [that] in most cases, the casting principle was based on the music quality of the singers,” Sheng wrote to the paper. “Of course, time [sic] has changed, and I made a mistake in showing this film. It was insensitive of me, and I am very sorry.”

Cook told the Daily that she realized something was wrong when the film began but didn’t realize she could be outraged until “further inspection,” when she noticed Olivier was in blackface.

“I was stunned,” Cook said. “In such a school that preaches diversity and making sure that they understand the history of POC [people of color] in America, I was shocked that [Sheng] would show something like this in something that’s supposed to

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