It was the second class of the semester when the chair of the economics department took a teaching detour to talk to students about the age of his recent faculty hires.
He’d brought on four new professors — all young — to teach economics at Southern Utah University, David Berri told the class. And as department chair, Berri said, he decided to give those younger professors their choice of courses and class times, because he felt accommodating their wishes made more sense than giving deference to more experienced faculty, as is traditionally done.
“That’s the dumbest way to do it,” he lamented of the standard, “because the younger faculty have options in life. They can leave.”
Meanwhile, as Berri put it, older faculty often have tenure and rarely leave, he told a roomful of students and more watching online.
“For the older people, I don’t care if they’re happy because they’re old,” he said. “… Where the hell are [they] going?”
One older faculty member in his department, he continued, frequently raises issues with the setup, saying his seniority should give him some sway. But Berri said he doesn’t care: “You’re not going anywhere, so I’m OK with you being unhappy, so go away.”
A video clip of that one-minute aside from the 50-minute class discussion has since been shared widely online, sparking debate over whether Berri’s comments were inappropriate or taken out of context. One student, David Lawrence — who shortly after Berri’s initial remarks was also called out in the class for appearing older — firmly believes it was ageism.
“David, I’m going to guess you’re not young,” Berri said at one point during the same class, seeing Lawrence’s face on video as he’d joined the class remotely.
Lawrence has since transferred out of Berri’s course. “I was scared to go back to college at my age,” said Lawrence, who is 49. “All the confidence I gained, he took it all back.”
Others say Berri was just joking around and was misunderstood — and that the professor openly acknowledges he is 56 years old and counts himself among older faculty.
“I was talking about myself as well,” Berri told The Salt Lake Tribune.
(Screenshot) Pictured is Southern Utah University professor David Berri during a class discussion in August 2025 where a student has raised concerns alleging ageism.
The comments from the Aug. 29 class, though, have led to a formal equity investigation at the Cedar City-based school.
“Southern Utah University is aware of the video and takes all reported concerns from our campus community seriously, following standard policies and procedures to provide a thorough review,” the university responded in a statement. “SUU strives to foster a supportive and caring campus community.”
Ashton Applewhite, a fellow with Cogenerate — a nonprofit that works to bridge divides between generations — said she believes what Berri said was clearly ageist but also unprofessional, both for the student and the faculty he manages.
Berri’s job, she said, is to support and mentor faculty in their professional development, no matter their age.
“He sees no problem with insulting and exploiting his more vulnerable colleagues,” said Applewhite, an internationally recognized expert on ageism and author of “This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism."
She added: “It’s no more excusable than if he’d said ‘fat’ or ‘female’ or ‘queer’ instead of ‘old,’ and I’m glad the university is looking into this.”
What the student says
Lawrence first clipped the video and shared it on his Facebook page after feeling frustrated with how he was treated.
It quickly spread across platforms, snowballing with more and more comments each time.
“Thinking you’ve ‘discovered’ a management strategy that is actually age discrimination,” one person wrote.
“Seriously can’t understand how he is department chair,” said another.
Some folks have chided Lawrence for not clipping the full context around the comments. He says that wasn’t the first time Berri called him out.
During the first lecture of the semester, on Aug. 22, Berri specifically named Lawrence — and only Lawrence — when welcoming the roughly 20 or so students who’d joined remotely, Lawrence said. It felt weird, then weirder still after the second class, he said, when Berri announced Lawrence was likely “not young.”
In the lecture that followed, Lawrence opted to turn his camera off, but for a third time, Berri referred to him, saying: “David isn’t showing his face.”
“I don’t know anything about why he targeted me, except his comment about my age,” Lawrence said.
It made him so uncomfortable, Lawrence said, that he made a therapy appointment with the campus counseling center. “I broke down a few times,” he added.
When the therapist asked, Lawrence showed the video from class — each lecture is recorded and posted online. That therapist, Lawrence said, then shared it with the dean of students at SUU.
Shortly after, the school’s deputy director of equal opportunity asked to talk with Lawrence. Lawrence said he wants to be clear that he never filed a complaint but is participating in the investigation and believes he was discriminated against.
He said it took a lot for him to enroll at SUU, which he did in 2024. He’s currently battling a heart condition, which is why he’s taking the class online; he wears an oxygen tube around his nose to help him breathe.
He might’ve started higher education sooner, he added, but he spent his years out of high school helping raise his sister’s daughter, as well as taking care of his ailing mother.
“Year after year I kept telling myself I was too old,” he said. “I’m determined now, and I’m working hard.”
Lawrence hopes after a heart surgery scheduled for next year that he’ll be able to take classes in person to finish up his bachelor’s in accounting. He plans to graduate in spring 2027 — the first of his six siblings to go to college.
He had intended to pursue a master’s after that and work in academia, potentially at SUU. But he said Berri’s comments have discouraged him.
At this point, he said, he plans to avoid Berri’s classes if possible. And he’d like to see some kind of penalty for the professor.
“SUU is a good place. He’s the outlier,” Lawrence said. “I really believe the video says it all. He’s teaching students to discriminate.”
The professor’s response
Berri shared the full lecture in question with The Tribune and argued what came before his comments is crucial.
The class started off with Berri nonchalantly complaining that it’s held at 2 p.m. on Fridays. Most professors want to teach on Tuesday and Thursday mornings — a common class scheduling problem that schools statewide are trying to address.
Berri then mentioned he had another class scheduled after, at 3 p.m.
“I’m the chair,” he said. “I’m the one who made the schedule.”
He explained his situation stems from him giving the younger faculty he hired scheduling preferences. He didn’t explicitly say that he counted himself among the older faculty who aren’t prioritized, but Berri did say, “I guess I ended up in the afternoon because of that.”
Berri also added: “At a certain point in academia, if you’re in your 50s, you ain’t going anywhere. No one’s hiring you. That’s just not going to happen, no matter who the hell you are.”
In a call with The Tribune, the professor said that his point was he is among the older faculty.
“My thinking was, when I saw the video online, is that the student just didn’t understand that I was talking about myself as well,” Berri said. “The younger faculty, they’re the ones doing all these exciting things and research. And the older people, including me, should take a back seat.”
Berri said that should’ve been clear when he joked that he forgot to hit “record” on his first lecture because he’s “too old.”
Saying he didn’t care about whether older faculty were happy, he also acknowledged, “was probably not the best way to say it.”
“It didn’t come out exactly the way I wanted it to come out,” he added. “But it would be the case that that’s in reference to me, as well. Academia is not like other jobs.”
Once a faculty member gets tenure, Berri reiterated, it’s unlikely they will leave a university, because they’d have to start the process over at another school.
The professor also noted that he teaches about inclusiveness in his economic history class and didn’t mean to cause offense.
An apology
In the same lecture, shortly after his faculty comments, Berri spoke about a time he taught a class of students in Thailand from Cedar City.
He would log on at 8 a.m., and because of the time difference, the students were logging on at 7 p.m. During that experience, he thought it was impressive to have live video instruction on different continents. “But that’s because I’m old,” he said.
That’s when he called out Lawrence for his apparent age.
“David, I’m going to guess that you’re not young,” Berri said. “So you remember ‘The Jetsons,’ correct? See ‘The Jetsons’ was cool because they had video calls, and we thought that was like, cool.”
But most of the other students in the class, who are largely in their late teens and early 20s, likely grew up familiar with instant connections, he said.
Berri said he was trying to connect with Lawrence in that moment. “I don’t think this older student understood what I was saying. What I was saying is ‘Hey, you’re like me. We’re the same people.’”
The professor said he often tries to bond with students who he thinks might be around his age, because they’re more likely to understand his references, including an example on the “sunk costs” economic theory that refers to the Vietnam War.
His younger students, Berri said, will often ask: “Where’s Vietnam again? Who’s Lyndon Johnson?” But, he said, “When you have older students they go, ‘Oh, I know what you’re talking about.’”
“I do that when I’m teaching,” Berri said. “I will note that in class: I’m old, you’re old.”
Berri said he hasn’t heard concerns about his approach before and believes Lawrence misunderstood him. “I think he hears that ‘old’ thing, and he jumps to a conclusion about that.”
And the professor apologized. “I’m sorry that I troubled him like that,” he added.
Berri said he started teaching 30 years ago, when he was about the same age as most of his students. Now, he said, he’s old enough to be their dad.
“This is the problem with teaching: You keep getting older and the students never age. They’re always 18,” he said.
And he thinks the school’s investigation will conclude the same. “Are you really accusing a 56-year-old professor of ageism? That doesn’t make sense.”
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