Don't let your students make porn

Thanks for all the good wishes, gang.  We'll see how things develop here in Research City.

Meanwhile, let us distract ourselves with one of the more bizarre cases I've encountered of professors being blamed for no good reason: a Turkish film student with a really dumb chip on his shoulder made a pornographic film for his dissertation, which led to his professors being fired.  What cracks me up and horrifies me at the same time is that the profs clearly did everything in their power to prevent him from doing this in the first place.  First, they warned him that he had to have, you know, an idea to explore that could justify doing something so self-aggrandizing and sensationalistic.  Second, when the jackass went ahead and made his porno anyway – without, it appears, any critical engagement – his committee failed the project.  (Hey, they warned him!) 

And then the jackass gave an interview in small-minded, petty, undeserved retribution explaining why he acted on such a stupid impulse.  In reaction, as it appears, the government leaned on the university to think of the children! suck up to religious conservatives! do something, which translated into "fire everyone who tried their best to keep a problem student in line."  Now, adding insult to injury, the profs are being investigated by the police, which may be just to make the police feel better, since the person they'd really like to arrest has gone into hiding.  And, for good measure, "the entire Communications Faculty has been shut down."  

At least no one overreacted.