According to the Boston Globe, a University of Massachusetts English Prof named Richard Burt has been pressured by school authorities to remove his website which features racy pictures and a whole lot more.
Burt has written books such as ''Unspeakable ShaXXXspeares,'' has dressed up for Halloween as a porn film director (his wife as a porn star), and has collected photos of bare-chested strippers straddling his lap.
Some say that Burt, a tenured English professor known at the University of Massachusetts for his scholarship on censorship and sexuality, crossed the line. After receiving complaints through e-mail, school administrators pressured Burt to remove his racy Web site from university-owned computers.
''The Web site was out of bounds,'' said Kay Scanlan, a university spokeswoman. ''Once it was brought to our attention, the department head spoke to him, and he took it down.''
Burt refused to comment, but university officials argued they weren't infringing on his academic freedom because the site used a university account and violated Umass's ''acceptable use'' policy for information technology.
''I think harassment is in the eye of beholder,'' Scanlan said. ''But I think this site could definitely be viewed as harassment.''
On the opening page of Burt's Web site, visitors could see pictures of the professor fondling the breasts of a blonde. On another page, Burt listed links to ''Porn Stars I Have Known,'' revealing photos - ''some of them shocking!!!'' - of his wife Betsy in her ''Slut Wear,'' and links to porn sites.
A visitor to Burt's site also learned the 46-year-old professor was born in San Jose, Calif., earned his PhD in English literature at the University of California at Berkeley, moved to UMass in 1986, and became a full professor there in 1998.
Burt on his site also posted such musings as: ''Here are photos of my incredibly wonderful, and supercool wife, Betsy. I am a total Betsy junkie. I really love her. She is so bright and glamorous. And hot!''
Promoting a stripper's Web site on his university Web site, Burt affectionately described getting to know her. She even invited his wife to become a porn star, an offer she declined, he said.
Burt's boss, Stephen Clingman, chairman of Umass's English department, had the task of confronting his professor with the complaints. While Clingman recognized the potential questions of academic freedom and freedom of expression, he also knew the administration's central concern: the fair use of the university's public space.
''I think these things do matter,'' he said. ''But telling a professor or a student what they can and can't publish on the Internet requires some thought and investigation.''
In Virginia, a federal appeals court last year upheld a law barring state employees from ''sexually explicit communication'' on the Internet. The case, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of six professors from colleges throughout Virginia, charged that the state law violated the First Amendment.
''These are pretty tough cases to make a privacy argument,'' said John Roberts, executive director of ACLU of Massachusetts. ''It's much easier if he was doing it on his own at home. But it changes when you're at an office or at a university.''
