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November 29, 2003


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Indiana prof's blog raises academic freedom issues


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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."

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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


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