Hacker News Reader

Comment by lsiebert | Hacker News Reader

If he didn't have the online content up on Ed X, then why would the female online students who he apparently had inappropriate online interactions with have communicated with him?

I'll agree that his video lectures themselves probably didn't have him acting inappropriately. His website says his video lectures are coming soon, so I suspect he may release the content there. But MIT is, in my view at least, not obligated to promote or host his content on EdX, and if I were them I wouldn't want to be associated with the guy. And that's assuming that they weren't worried about further people contacting him and being harassed.

View on HN

Stopping a course because the instructor behaved in inappropriate ways outside the classroom (which is a fuzzy notion with EdX courses) is one thing, which would be an undrstandable step for MIT to defend their reputation.

Taking down existing video content, which is only incidentally connected to the problematic behaviour (Lewin seems to have his role as the course instructor rather than the videos as an excuse to make contact with course participants), to me would be more akin to burning the books written by an unliked person than to any act legitimately defending MITs or the course participants' interests.

That's hyperbolic. It's more like removing a book from a library than burning it.

Every time I delete a file, am I a book burner?

I think taking down a video is directly analogous to stopping providing a course. Hosting those videos could reasonably be construed as endorsement of that person as an educator, something MIT clearly doesn't want to do.

In the end it's their site and their reputation on the line.

> Every time I delete a file, am I a book burner?

If you are the official source and don't provide a mirror, arguably.

EdX is a system with scheduled classes, where the instructor is posting videos and interacting throughout the scheduled class with students via the online forum (and possibly email, I assume).

OCW is not that. It's just videos and notes posted online for people to work through on their own. Very different situation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com