It is true that you don't write posts which describe students in a sexual light and admirably restrict yourself to celebrities (and smart ones at that- I enjoyed the link to the story about diana mckellar). However, I do think you underestimate the possible sensitivities of your students as well as the committee reviewing you for tenure.

When going to your office hours, your female students might wonder what's going on in your mind, specifically whether you're entertaining thoughts of them in a swimsuit. Some of them will view your posting of scantily clad women as offensive or degrading. While this may be an overreaction, you certainly must know it will happen. There's still enough discrimination against women (or the memory of it) in academia to make young women particularly attentive to signs that their intellect is not being taken seriously. The pics may send that signal to some of them. Why take that risk?

Your blog is in almost every other way completely professional. The pics are a glaring and odd exception to this rule. I think you should consider retiring that particular feature of the site. And don't worry, it's the internet: I, along with the rest of your readers, will have no trouble finding pictures of hot, scantily clad people elsewhere.

I know Gee fairly well. We were classmates at Wesleyan 30+ years ago and played in a band for a few years afterward. And I spent a long weekend with him and his wife at a band reunion a few summers ago.

Despite the lurid saloon rocker image, this is a sweet, civilized guy, not a leering jackass. His predicament reminds me of the anti-semitism allegations against Gregg Easterbrook a while ago when he made some careless remarks in a blog.

Oddly enough, an hour or so before I learned the news about Gee I had posted the news to TPM Cafe that Sen. Obama had hired Samantha Power as a foreign policy aide. There was an almost immediate comment asking if she was the "hot redhead" who appears frequently on Charlie Rose's show.

This was my reply:
"An old friend was summarily fired yesterday from a teaching job at BU's J-school for blogging a juvenile remark about a "hot" student so I'll refrain from that.

"But to string together some innocent physical remarks, she's a polished talking head who doesn't come off as a hand-wringing bleeding heart.

And her hair is red."

I, for one, would be disappointed if your blog did not continue to appreciate Selma Hayek as much as -- if not more than -- Frederick. Although a super-feminist with some arbitrary grudge against you _could_ conceivably turn it against you, you have the fact that your blog is 99% serious politics to counteract that. You don't expose details about your bosses, co-workers, or students; you don't tell us about your personal dramas; you don't post your awful poetry. This is what separates you from the thousands of other "bloggers" who use it is a disturbingly public forum to pour their hearts out, not a means to exploring ideas.

I agree with anonymous' post above. Your blog has become a strange mixture of very professional, thoughtful, academically relevant posts and in between some private, superficial, un-academic posts. It not only probably would be good for your academic career to separate them both more carefully, but it also would help your academic posts to gain more respectfulness.

i agree with anonymous, it would not be difficult to imagine students and peers might take offense of his objectification of women.

this, i believe, is drezner's first defense of his posting crass pictures of (typically young, student aged) women on his blog, and the best he can do is that he doesn't have photos of his students or call them out as hotties? this seems awfully naive.

however, there are two additional points of interest: first, that drezner "would have done the same thing" and turned gee in - is this to imply that he would be comfortable having his posts brought to the attention of his tenure committee (have you been up yet?), department head, dean, various university offices.

second, after his latest, exceptionally crass crotch shot of katie holmes, he seems to have taken note of previous criticism by passing over the opportunity to post a photo of someone called dancia, assuredly worthy of his "occular interest" [please], as he has posted a photo of this nubile woman before.

Lighten up people. Everyone I remember seeing pictured on this blog is not only a "public figure" but is also someone whose looks are a big part of their professional lives. "Being hot" gets them jobs, and they know it.

Blogging about a student, if there was any information identifying the student (directly or indirectly), is a violation of federal law.

AS far as pictures of female celebrities, I enjoy looking sometimes, although I am too old to remember why.

Time for my Geritol.

andrew, your point is ridiculous. folks in porn make their living by fucking, would that make it appropriate for drezner to post pictures of folks fucking on his blog, if they were employees of the porn industry? i think not.

you are also completely ignoring the fact, by dan's admission, that his role as professor carries power over his students. his posting photos of young, "hot" women - even crotch-shots - helps define the relationships he has with his students and peers. the photos arguably perpetutate a hostile environment against women.

to ben, that drezner's blog is "99% serious politics" does not counteract the fact that he publishes objectifying photos of women. instead, as i stated above, the serious posts that nearly fill drezner's blog neccesitates that his students read the blog. in fact, drezner has commented on the importance of the blog in forming thoughts, doing research, etc. - any student of his would be foolish not to participate in the conversation. that said, they are being exposed to what some people likely find offensive objectification of women - i do. if the 1% of objectionable material was more inflammatory, this would likely not be a difficult issue. instead, drezner is trading on the socially acceptable demaning of women by objectifying them as objects of "occular interest."

"Any student of his would be foolish not to participate in the conversation"? Does every undergrad who has him in the social science core suddenly rush to comment on his blog, since outsourcing and the value of the dollar are so relevant to a reading of Hobbes and Locke? Because he shows his admiration for some models with the occasional link, will these undergrads then suddenly envision him fantasizing about them nude while in seminar? The only truly safe solution would be to castrate and sterilize him -- you know how all men are just evil predators deep down inside anyway.

Perhaps, however, you're right. There are people like you pathetic and humorless enough to be "offended" by Drezner's occasional break from academics. Even UChicago, I'm sure, is populated with many students and professors like you, looking to insiduously demean and destroy anybody who does not conform to your silly and righteous agenda. One should avoid as much as possible providing fodder to be twisted to your ends.

Hopefully none of my young female professors ever express sexual attraction to a male movie star. I would immediately conclude that she is a superficial person and probably will grade me on my "hunkiness" rather than my academic ability. Then I will go home and cry.

It's kind of amusing that conservatives (some)will be the first to trash a liberal who points out that some women might find trashy pictures of women to be demeaning. And, conversely, it is conservatives who then point to liberals as the source of all the trash coming out of Hollywood, the lowering of our morality standards, etc.

That comment that got him fired is the sort of thing that belongs on LiveJournal, visible only to himself or his friends list. And even then it's a risk.

Really stupid post by Gee, particularly the "sense danger" part, as if there were some risk of sexual involvement. A little more elliptical way of describing her, a wry comment that alas such nubile students are untouchable, and, arguably, a different result.

Dan is indeed taking a small risk by his pin-up enthusiasm. But how far can you guard against such risks and live your life? Does Dan really want to work someplace where commenting on Salma Hayek's hotness is prohibited?

My reading of the original posting was that the poor author was adjusting to life in academia - one of the problems he identified are the sexual temptations. He didn't say he was planning on jumping her bones - no, he said he saw temptations and would have to work on overcoming them or trouble would result.

Looks like a confession and a warning - not leering or public planning of a seduction. I'd call this political correctness run amuck.

There are no hot women at U of C.

Excuuuuuuuuse me, UofCkid, but I beg to differ. Unless of course you don't find brainy chicks sexy.

Bear in mind that a few months ago, the Chronicle ran a whole article where a junior faculty member (or maybe even a TA) was talking about how he basically wanted to jump the bones of some students in his classes.

That said, I'm with Dan; academics really need a bright-line rule about that stuff.

I have an eztended take on this here.

I knew someone who married her former tutor, and they were happy for more than 40 years, but they didn't start dating until long after he stopped having authority over her. That distinction would be lost today.

I'm with commentor Mark Paul above. I must add that I am also a college classmate of Michael Gee's and find the reaction of Boston University and most of the overly-PC commentors above stomach twisting. God, doesn't anyone have any sense of perspective anymore?

Everyone's like "off with their heads" and "strike one, you're out", with plenty of tut-tutting about "personal responsibility". What sniveling groupthink! You all sound like a bunch of goody-goddy middle schoolers.

Judging from Mike's blog comments, perhaps they were overly jocular and indiscreet, but his point seemed to be that he had some strangely disinterested students (don't journo students need to read newspapers anymore?) one of whom was distractingly beautiful.

Too bad the school didn't take him aside from this egregious breach and give him a second chance. Seemed like the students could have learned something from Mike's 30 some odd year tenure as a feature sportswriter on a major newspaper. Now they won't have a chance.

The only good thing about this is I will now have a good excuse to decline to give money to Boston University when they call to pester me. You can't just keep using (former president) John Silver as an excuse. Now I'll be able to tell them to get lost for what they did to my friend Michael.