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Blogging Professor Causes Stir at Yeshiva

Inside Higher Ed just broke a story about James Otteson, professor and head of the honors program at Yeshiva University. Otterson resigned from his position (although he is still under tenure at the moment) shortly after the Yeshiva administration discovered his pseudonymous blog.

The blog contained what some felt were sexist comments. Although Yeshiva insists that it’s a “personal matter,” and Otterson is legally gagged by a non-disclosure agreement, Inside Higher Ed managed to dig a little farther:

In another e-mail obtained by Inside Higher Ed from Otteson to a colleague, he states his belief that the administration stopped supporting him because of the contents of his blog. He also quotes Joel as having said to him, “You lost my support when I read your blog.” Still, he later adds that he has a “hard time imagining this is the real reason,” saying that it does not seem “to warrant action like this.”

“My integrity and honor have been questioned, and, more than that, what I believe are the most fundamental principles of education — the marketplace of ideas, mutual tolerance and civility, disinterested pursuit of the truth, and, not least, liberty and independence of thought — have been sacrificed to the altars of political correctness, intolerance, and bigotry,” Otteson writes in an e-mail to close friends. “This is wrong and it must stop.”

Furthermore, many students were outraged by the controversy. Over 50 students in the honors program signed and delivered a letter to the administration defending Otterson.

As a private university, Yeshiva has the right to decide what kind of faculty it wants, but it would be a sad precedent if a competent, well-liked and otherwise civil professor was forced out because of the content of his personal blog.