Jigs
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Monday, January 10, 2011
ÖZGÜR ÖĞRET
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/images/2011_01_10/response-to-****-scandal-by-istanbuls-bilgi-university-violated-academic-freedom-protesters-say-2011-01-10_l.jpg
Students, scholars and outside supporters protested Monday at a scandal-hit Istanbul university, saying the firing of three academics over a student’s “pornography project” was a violation of academic freedom.
“Society is close-minded and so are the academics,” said mathematician Ali Nesin, who attended the protest at Istanbul Bilgi University, when asked by the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review why most academics who have been willing to be quoted by the media have supported limits to what falls under the realm of scholarly inquiry.
“Academic freedom is not the freedom to drink coffee in your office,” Nesin said. “It is [being able to] swim in dangerous waters.”
Participants in the demonstration demanded that the three academics be reinstated in their jobs and the situation be investigated by “an unbiased committee” according to the academic rules. They also called for what they described as the recent “terror atmosphere” on campus to be explained properly to students and faculty.
By firing the three faculty members for approving a student’s final thesis titled “The **** Project,” protesters said, Bilgi was harming its own reputation as a modern and tolerant institution. They said the study of pornography-related texts is included within the scope of academic disciplines all around the world and should also be allowed in the projects of the faculties of Visual Communication Design and Photography and Video at Bilgi.
Better relations with union also demanded
University security tried to keep press off the campus during the protest, but were forced to allow them after demonstrators came to the gate chanting, “Let the police out, let the press in.” As a number of Bilgi graduates and other supporters were not allowed access to the campus, the press bulletins were read beside the gate. Students presented petitions that included their demands to management and then occupied the three stories of exterior walkways on the side of the E1 Building, where the affected faculties are housed.
Six separate press bulletins were read and distributed at the demonstration by the Sosyal-İş Union’s Istanbul Branch, “the unionized employees of Istanbul Bilgi University,” “scholars of the faculties of Visual Communications Design, Photography and Video and Cinema Television,” and students from various faculties. The demonstration did not solely focus on the pornography debate, with students also protesting the shutting down of faculties such as Computer Science and Political Economy and Social Philosophy due to them not producing enough revenue or “being ideological.” The students said so-called foundation universities such as Bilgi cannot seek profits according to the law.
Demonstrators also asked the school to reconsider its decision to require assistants to complete their doctorates within seven years, and to improve its relations with the union.
Academics who preferred to remain unanimous said since Bilgi became a member of the Laureate International Universities, the management has been trying to remove the unionized staff and replace them with its own people. Both staff and students repeated a rumor circulating Monday that said faculty members who took part in the protest would also be fired.
A ‘**** project’ on campus
The controversy that erupted over student Deniz Özgün’s final thesis, “The **** Project,” which included footage of two people having sex, led to the dismissal of three lecturers at Bilgi. Professor İ.D., who was the former head of the Visual Communication Design Faculty, and scholars A.P. and A.A.A. were fired Jan. 3 by the school administration, which also filed criminal complaints against them with a prosecutor’s office since pornography is a punishable offense under Turkish law.
The management announced these actions via e-mail and then shut down every e-mail account belonging to staff in the VCD Faculty and blocked all websites related to the faculty. This was done to block the creation of a unified stance on the issue, protesters said Monday.
On Jan 4, police raided the E1 Building, searched the rooms of the academics and copied the contents of their hard drives. Computers in the faculty’s computer lab were searched by the management and their hard drives were removed. Bilgi management then announced Jan. 7 that all final exams were cancelled apart from the final theses, something that was criticized by students and scholars as a violation of educational rights.
Turkish academics who talked to the press typically spoke out against pornography-related projects and research taking place in an academic setting. “It is not the place of a student to question academic freedom; that is an academic’s job,” Professor Oğuz Adanır, head of the Cinema Television Faculty at İzmir’s 9 Eylül University, told daily Radikal. Speaking to the same publication Sunday, Professor Sevda Alankuş, the dean of İzmir Ekonomi University, said she would try to stop such a project if it were proposed at her school.
The Daily News tried repeatedly to contact the Bilgi University rector’s office Monday for a comment on the issue but the call center said the office was not answering and the direct number provided was not open.
Pornography is not OK, but what about phone sex?
Istanbul Bilgi University is being called hypocritical by some columnists for its treatment of academics who approved a student’s “**** project” because the school’s funding initially came from phone sex lines.
Bilgi University founder Oğuz Özerden owned a company, Alo Bilgi, that operated a variety of premium call-in phone lines, including those offering phone sex. Özerden told daily Hürriyet in 2002 that the company had partnered with the Turkish edition of Penthouse, the globally known pornographic publication, back in 1993 since their competitors were also in the business of sex lines, but the cooperation lasted only one month.
ÖZGÜR ÖĞRET
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/images/2011_01_10/response-to-****-scandal-by-istanbuls-bilgi-university-violated-academic-freedom-protesters-say-2011-01-10_l.jpg
Students, scholars and outside supporters protested Monday at a scandal-hit Istanbul university, saying the firing of three academics over a student’s “pornography project” was a violation of academic freedom.
“Society is close-minded and so are the academics,” said mathematician Ali Nesin, who attended the protest at Istanbul Bilgi University, when asked by the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review why most academics who have been willing to be quoted by the media have supported limits to what falls under the realm of scholarly inquiry.
“Academic freedom is not the freedom to drink coffee in your office,” Nesin said. “It is [being able to] swim in dangerous waters.”
Participants in the demonstration demanded that the three academics be reinstated in their jobs and the situation be investigated by “an unbiased committee” according to the academic rules. They also called for what they described as the recent “terror atmosphere” on campus to be explained properly to students and faculty.
By firing the three faculty members for approving a student’s final thesis titled “The **** Project,” protesters said, Bilgi was harming its own reputation as a modern and tolerant institution. They said the study of pornography-related texts is included within the scope of academic disciplines all around the world and should also be allowed in the projects of the faculties of Visual Communication Design and Photography and Video at Bilgi.
Better relations with union also demanded
University security tried to keep press off the campus during the protest, but were forced to allow them after demonstrators came to the gate chanting, “Let the police out, let the press in.” As a number of Bilgi graduates and other supporters were not allowed access to the campus, the press bulletins were read beside the gate. Students presented petitions that included their demands to management and then occupied the three stories of exterior walkways on the side of the E1 Building, where the affected faculties are housed.
Six separate press bulletins were read and distributed at the demonstration by the Sosyal-İş Union’s Istanbul Branch, “the unionized employees of Istanbul Bilgi University,” “scholars of the faculties of Visual Communications Design, Photography and Video and Cinema Television,” and students from various faculties. The demonstration did not solely focus on the pornography debate, with students also protesting the shutting down of faculties such as Computer Science and Political Economy and Social Philosophy due to them not producing enough revenue or “being ideological.” The students said so-called foundation universities such as Bilgi cannot seek profits according to the law.
Demonstrators also asked the school to reconsider its decision to require assistants to complete their doctorates within seven years, and to improve its relations with the union.
Academics who preferred to remain unanimous said since Bilgi became a member of the Laureate International Universities, the management has been trying to remove the unionized staff and replace them with its own people. Both staff and students repeated a rumor circulating Monday that said faculty members who took part in the protest would also be fired.
A ‘**** project’ on campus
The controversy that erupted over student Deniz Özgün’s final thesis, “The **** Project,” which included footage of two people having sex, led to the dismissal of three lecturers at Bilgi. Professor İ.D., who was the former head of the Visual Communication Design Faculty, and scholars A.P. and A.A.A. were fired Jan. 3 by the school administration, which also filed criminal complaints against them with a prosecutor’s office since pornography is a punishable offense under Turkish law.
The management announced these actions via e-mail and then shut down every e-mail account belonging to staff in the VCD Faculty and blocked all websites related to the faculty. This was done to block the creation of a unified stance on the issue, protesters said Monday.
On Jan 4, police raided the E1 Building, searched the rooms of the academics and copied the contents of their hard drives. Computers in the faculty’s computer lab were searched by the management and their hard drives were removed. Bilgi management then announced Jan. 7 that all final exams were cancelled apart from the final theses, something that was criticized by students and scholars as a violation of educational rights.
Turkish academics who talked to the press typically spoke out against pornography-related projects and research taking place in an academic setting. “It is not the place of a student to question academic freedom; that is an academic’s job,” Professor Oğuz Adanır, head of the Cinema Television Faculty at İzmir’s 9 Eylül University, told daily Radikal. Speaking to the same publication Sunday, Professor Sevda Alankuş, the dean of İzmir Ekonomi University, said she would try to stop such a project if it were proposed at her school.
The Daily News tried repeatedly to contact the Bilgi University rector’s office Monday for a comment on the issue but the call center said the office was not answering and the direct number provided was not open.
Pornography is not OK, but what about phone sex?
Istanbul Bilgi University is being called hypocritical by some columnists for its treatment of academics who approved a student’s “**** project” because the school’s funding initially came from phone sex lines.
Bilgi University founder Oğuz Özerden owned a company, Alo Bilgi, that operated a variety of premium call-in phone lines, including those offering phone sex. Özerden told daily Hürriyet in 2002 that the company had partnered with the Turkish edition of Penthouse, the globally known pornographic publication, back in 1993 since their competitors were also in the business of sex lines, but the cooperation lasted only one month.
