MIT Professor Walter Lewin's Online Lectures Removed: Open Access at MIT Questioned | BostInno

"MIT indefinitely removed Walter Lewin's lectures in December from massive open online course platforms MIT OpenCourseWare and edX, after discovering the retired physics professor sexually harassed a student via the latter learning portal. Lewin, whose teaching antics made him a YouTube sensation, retired from the Institute in July 2009, according to the school, and last taught an online course in the fall of 2013. Following the news that Lewin's lectures would be taken down, current MIT professor Scott Aaronson published a blog post sharing his thoughts on how the school handled the situation. 'I'm someone who feels that sexual harassment must never be tolerated, neither here nor anywhere else,' wrote the associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, who's affiliated with the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Yet he went on to write: 'I wish to register that I disagree in the strongest possible terms with MIT's decision to remove Prof. Lewin's lectures from OpenCourseWare — thereby forcing the tens of thousands of students around the world who were watching these legendary lectures to hunt for ripped copies on BitTorrent.' Students have taken to Reddit threads and the comment section of MIT's student newspaper The Tech to voice similar concerns. By making the move MIT did, several argued the Institute was punishing the wrong party: students eager to learn. 'There has to be a certain separation between a person and their work,' wrote one Redditor. 'Are we going to remove Beatles songs because John Lennon abused Yoko Ono? Or the movie 'Braveheart' because of Mel Gibson?' Some critics claimed this was a PR play by MIT to help keep its reputation intact ..."