An attempt to terminate a tenured professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio is raising questions about whether professors’ free speech rights extends to pornography, especially when it is accessed on a government-owned computer.

The San Antonio Express-News, reports that, “professor Ronald Ayers was fired last year for reviewing pornography on his work computer, sparked by a complaint from a graduate student who said she overheard sexual noises coming from Ayer’s office.”

However, a faculty tribunal overturned the decision last month, saying Ayers acted with poor judgment but should not be terminated. The case will proceed to the University of Texas board of regents, which could support the tribunal’s decision, overturn it, or kick it back to the tribunal. Pending the outcome of the case, Ayers is on administrative leave with pay.

In a May 6 letter to UT regents, the five-member faculty acknowledged UTSA’s computer use policy that forbids accessing “obscene” materials, but the policy didn’t apply to Ayers, since it didn’t consider “sexually-explicit” materials as “obscene.”

Under a legal technicality, Ayers did nothing illegal, but David Gabler, a university spokesman, argues a professor should not be allowed to surf pornography on a work computer.

To read the entire article from the San Antonio Express-News, link here:

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