When Spike Lee was a student at NYU Film School, he was required to watch D. W. Griffith's silent movie The Birth of a Nation for his classes. Lee was so outraged that his professors taught the movie with no mention of its racist message or its real-life role in the Klan's twentieth century rebirth that he made The Answer (1980) as a response. Many professors took great offense, and Lee was nearly expelled. He ultimately was saved by a faculty vote. After Lee's film industry success, he became a professor at NYU Film School, and Artistic Director of the Graduate Film Department.
