St. John’s has fired its assistant fencing coach for shocking racist comments made during a virtual clinic that was leaked on Instagram, the school confirmed to The Post.
Boris Vaksman was let go Wednesday after his scathing comments — he said the “majority” of blacks steal, kill and do drugs, and President Abraham Lincoln “made a mistake” by ending slavery — went public.
“As soon as the recording was brought to our attention the matter was immediately investigated and the individual no longer works at the University,” St. John’s athletic director Mike Cragg said in a statement issued to The Post. “The racist comments expressed are completely unacceptable and a rejection of everything for which the University stands.”
The comments, made on a Zoom call, come amid nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd, whose neck was pinned to the ground by the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer. St. John’s has released statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and its most recognizable program, men’s basketball, is led by a black coach, Mike Anderson, who grew up in Birmingham, Ala., during the civil rights movement. Anderson told The Post that on Election Day, there will be no basketball activities scheduled, so his entire team, mostly black men, can vote.
Vaksman had been an assistant coach at St. John’s since 2006 under Yury Gelman and he served as the United States Fencing Association’s junior national team coach from 2005-09. He is also a USA Fencing referee and coach within Fencer’s Club, a private fencing club in Manhattan. His name and bio were removed from the St. John’s website immediately.
In the video, he starts by saying, “Because the most trouble [is] coming from where? … from black people.” Later, he said: “Because they don’t want to work, they steal, they kill, they [do] drugs, everything comes from [black people]. The majority.”
Then, it somehow got worse.
“I think … what’s his name, Lincoln, made a mistake,” Vaksman said, a reference to President Abraham Lincoln ending slavery in 1863 by signing the Emancipation Proclamation.
The video was posted anonymously on Instagram and reposted by Olympian Ibtihaj Muhammad. In her post, she wrote: “This video is a reminder that coaches and teachers, those people entrusted with building us, educating us, and protecting us, too often perpetuate the discriminatory treatment and behaviors that normalize racism.”
USA Fencing addressed the issue without naming Vaksman specifically, writing on Instagram, “Today, USA Fencing became aware of an audio recording of a fencing coach that included virulently racist comments targeting the Black community. We are disgusted by these statements, which are racist, offensive and have no place in the USA Fencing community or in society as a whole.”
Vaksman didn’t respond to a request for comment. He is originally from Ukraine and was a four-time national epee champion and a four-time Soviet Union champion. He has coached several national champions at St. John’s, including Cooper Schumacher, Isis Washington, Natalie Vie and Yevgeniy Karyuchenko.