A University of Massachussetts English professor who also created and maintained his own adult website has the site back online - and says earlier reports that the university closed the site were mistaken.
"UMass will allow me to put it back up anytime I wish," said Prof. Richard Burt, whose site features erotically-oriented photographs of his wife, Betsy, among other features. "They asked me to put up a disclaimer if I chose to do so, and I said I would. For now, I have moved the site to a private server, where I could use a somewhat funnier name."
Indeed - www.naughtyprofessor.com, to be precise. Burt told AVN On the Net he's still mulling whether to restore the site to the university server. He said there might have been no controversy about the site but for a misunderstanding on the part of a Boston Globe reporter. "I got a call the day before the story broke from my department chair," Burt said. "He said only, 'A reporter from the Globe is going to call me in about ten minutes.' And I said, well, why don't you just tell him that I've taken (the website) down. And he said, how soon can you take it down, and I said I'll just do it right now. So that's what I did."
But the reporter mistook the chairman's comment for a direct order to bring the site down, Burt said. "He never even suggested anything about that," he said of the chairman. No one from the university called me. (The chairman) said someone from the administration called him… about two complaints. He said what should he do, since I hadn't violated any policy or broken any law."
Then what of a UMass spokeswoman who told the Globe Burt had violated university policy? "I read the story the morning the paper came out (earlier in April) and I was upset by the spokesperson and her comments, and I went over and talked to her, and she said she'd been quoted accurately," Burt said, "but she pulled out the policy - and it was about e-mail."
Burt also said he spoke to a university vice chancellor, who suggested Burt could repost the Website with a disclaimer, any way he wanted - which Burt did, calling it a "reasonable compromise." Burt also agreed to give the university a week's notice before he reposted the Website.
The site does more than just show off his attractive wife in suggestive appearances. There's a page devoted to porn stars the Burts have known, including veteran porn legends Annie Sprinkle and Nina Hartley. "She's really a great person," Burt said of Hartley, admitting he isn't interested in her porn work so much as in her writings on free speech and expression.
A full English professor, Burt's scholarship has included studies of what we now call porn's direct impact on such events as the French Revolution (he speaks of a satire, The Royal Dildo, depicting Marie Antoinette's longtime non-pregnancy because of Louis XVI's alleged impotence, among other things). He is the author of Unspeakable ShakXXXspeares, which includes an overview of several hardcore porn interpretations of Shakespearean works; and, Licensed By Authority: Ben Jonson and the Discourses of Censorship.
He said he has no immediate plans for the website other than just adding to it. Whether or not he reposts it on UMass servers remains an open question for him. "I'm concerned about the way the story was used against the university," he said. "We're already painted as too much booze and too much pot, and now too much porn because of me. Historically, though, I think porn has been the place where some incredibly important things have happened.
