Kerri Dunn

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Kerri Dunn was a visiting psychology professor at Claremont McKenna College. She was convicted of perpetrating a hoax, in which she defaced her own car by slashing its tires, breaking its windows, and spray painting several ethnic slurs and a partial swastika on its doors and hood. Dunn was tried in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Pomona, California. A jury found her guilty of one misdemeanor count of filing a false police report and two felony counts of attempting to file fraudulent insurance claims on her car.

The same day as the hoax, March 9, 2004, Dunn gave a lecture on the topic of hate speech at Claremont McKenna. She reported that someone else was responsible for the damage to her car and spoke at a campus rally the following evening. Dunn blamed the incident on a covert group of white male racists being supported by the general atmosphere of intolerance on the campus. After Dunn was arrested and it came to light that she was responsible for the damage to her car, the incident became a symbol of political correctness run amok. Many argued that, contrary to Dunn's allegations, the ideological climate at the Claremont Colleges was geared towards political correctness, and that the campus was eager to believe the worst about white males and their allegedly racist inclinations.

Unbeknownst to most people at the Claremont Colleges, Dunn had a lengthy history of criminal behavior. An FBI investigation eventually focused on Dunn herself as the racist vandal, after two students came forward with information that they had seen Dunn drive into a campus parking lot with epithets already spray painted on her vehicle. These students also testified that they saw Dunn slash the tires on her car.

Dunn was sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine. At the time of her conviction, Dunn continued to maintain her innocence. The incident followed a series of controversial — and widely considered to be racial — incidents at the Claremont Colleges. At Dunn's sentencing, Judge Charles Horan accused her of exploiting the other incidents at the Claremont Colleges (which, ultimately, were attributed to insensitive youthful indiscretions and not overt racism) to advance her own agenda. Judge Horan stated that Dunn's actions "...terrorized minority students on the campus and made suspects out of all the other students." According to Judge Horan, Dunn's crimes coupled with her unwillingness to confess to them warranted her confinement in state prison.