 |
Indiana prof's blog raises academic
freedom issues
By Maureen Ryan
Tribune staff
reporter
Published September 19,
2003
Should
homosexuals be hired as teachers? One outspoken Internet pundit says
no. But his opinion has fueled a controversy over academic freedom
of expression because it is posted on a site maintained by the
writer's employer, a state university.
Hiring gay teachers
"puts the fox into the chickencoop," Eric Rasmusen wrote on his Web
log, or "blog," on Aug. 26. "Male homosexuals, at least, like boys
and are generally promiscuous," he continued. "They should not be
given the opportunity to satisfy their desires."
Rasmusen's
blog resides on the server of Indiana University, where he is a
professor in the business school. His posted musings on whether
homosexuals should be allowed to be teachers, pastors or other kinds
of "moral exemplars" have caused a major campus uproar in the past
few weeks.
"It's almost impossible to keep up with the
reaction -- it's been as strong from the faculty and staff as it has
been from students," says Doug Bauder, the university's coordinator
of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender student support
services.
Writing a blog for public perusal has become the
latest fad on the Internet, and students and professors across the
country are taking advantage of the trend -- and of the free Web
pages provided by many universities.
Rasmusen's Web writings
would have probably remained obscure had Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law
professor who runs a popular group blog called The Volokh
Conspiracy, not posted a link to the writings on Rasmusen's site on
Sept. 2.
Soon officials at IU were alerted to the content of
Rasmusen's site, and on Sept. 4, Dan Dalton, the dean of the IU's
Kelley School of Business, had a meeting with Rasmusen, who offered
to temporarily transfer his blog to a private server while
university lawyers evaluated whether his writings violated school
policy regarding information posted on personal Web pages.
IU
policy says the university doesn't monitor content unless someone
files a complaint that a Web page "contains material that violates
the law or University policy."
"Free expression of ideas is a
central value within the academy," the written policy
states.
If the writings "had appeared in any other forum
except a university Web site, I would never have intervened," Dalton
said. "I've had many phone calls and e-mails, and people have
various views, but relatively few of them have criticized the
individual [Rasmusen] -- the overwhelming majority have criticized
the Kelley School of Business or IU [for allowing it to be posted],
and that was the basis for my concern."
It didn't take long
for the school's lawyers to decide Rasmusen's site did not violate
any university policies, and it soon went back on the school's
server. But at a faculty council meeting Tuesday in Bloomington,
Ind., IU Chancellor Sharon Brehm, while confirming Rasmusen's right
to make the statements on his Web page, called them "deeply
offensive, hurtful and very harmful stereotyping."
Brehm also
asked the university faculty council to look into possible changes
to the university's personal Web page policies; putting disclaimers
on each site is under discussion, Brehm said.
Such a move
would be constitutional, though perhaps unnecessary, says Volokh, an
expert on freedom of speech. "It might diminish the heat the
university might get in future, and it would just reinforce in
people's minds what they probably ought to know
already."
Perhaps the most famous academic blogger of all is
Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, who
calls himself The InstaPundit on his popular Web site. Reynolds'
site is located on a private server, not one maintained by his
university employer.
"I wouldn't go so far as to say I had a
really conscious desire to maintain separation" between his academic
career and his Internet punditry, Reynolds says.
"I thought
some jerk might make an issue some day, so I decided to take that
[possibility] away."
Daniel Drezner, a professor at the
University of Chicago who writes a blog about current events, says
there are big differences between scholarly writing and the
shoot-from-the-hip immediacy of the blogging world.
"I would
be reluctant to have blogging factored into tenure decisions," he
says. "The whole idea of scholarship is to meditate on an idea, to
test it critically and . . . to have your idea peer-reviewed. It's
slow, but your ideas are tested in the most rigorous way possible.
Blogs are often about spouting off what you're thinking without 10
minutes of reflection, and 30 minutes later you're sometimes
wondering, `Did I really write that?'"
As for Eric Rasmusen,
he said via e-mail that as a result of the controversy, "I will be
even more careful to only post things I really believe, and to
correct any errors people point out immediately."
But in a
recent post on his Web page, he also pointed out that his Web log
now has "ten times the number of readers it used to have."
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune
|
