By ERIC RICH
This story ran in the Courant September 1, 1999

MIDDLETOWN - Students returning to Wesleyan University this week will find hundreds of course offerings, from early German cinema to the economics of gender.

Yet perhaps the best-known class is the one they won't find: a course on pornography that drew national attention last year and sparked a vigorous debate on academic freedom.

``Pornography: Writing of Prostitutes'' will not be offered this year, but its instructor says she may offer the course when she returns from sabbatical.

The course became talk show fodder, not only for its subject matter, but for its final project requirement that students make their own porn.

If the class is to be offered in the future, university President Douglas Bennet said this week, he would expect it to undergo a faculty review just as any new course would.

That review could be more rigorous than the one that first approved the pornography class two years ago. On the heels of last spring's controversy, Bennet has asked faculty to more closely review courses that could offend, such as those that raise sensitive issues involving race or gender.

``If it works right,'' he said, ``it's very informal, very collegial and very consultative.''

Professor Hope Weissman, the course instructor, appears willing to put the class to the test again - although she disagrees with the need for another faculty review.

Weissman wouldn't say much Tuesday about whether she would alter the course to eliminate the final projects.

``Whatever the decision,'' she said, ``it's got to be based on the intellectual necessity of the subject and the pedagogical necessity of the teaching process - not on the basis of political pressures.''

Bennet said he expects there would be ``a lot of consideration'' of the final projects if the course is offered again. Those projects drew so much publicity that Bennet had to reroute his e-mail account because of a glut of critical letters.

After a semester steeped in theory, Weissman gave her students an open-ended assignment: Make pornography, and write about what you did. Projects last spring included a video showing a male student's eyes as he masturbated and performance art piece in which a scantily clad female student asked her classmates to whip her.

News of those projects sparked criticism from conservative talk show hosts, who decried the loose mores of liberal arts. One Methodist publication ran an article pointing out that Wesleyan dropped its affiliation with the church years ago.

In a syndicated column, conservative Laura Schlessinger branded the course's student defenders ``inexperienced, unenlightened, dependent yet arrogant.''

In the wake of the publicity, Bennet asked Richard Boyd, his vice president of academic affairs, to review the course. Bennet would not disclose the contents of the review, but a letter to students reveals his mixed feelings.

``This course was properly grounded in scholarly theory and was developed and approved according to Wesleyan's established faculty procedures,'' he wrote. ``Nonetheless, the decision to include production of pornography could have benefitted from more collegial consultation from departments and programs at Wesleyan.''

Students, professors and alumni were far from united in their views on the course.

In fact, when Bennet initiated a review of the course in response to the torrent of criticism, he was met with strong opposition on campus. At least a dozen tenured professors signed letters protesting the review and suggesting it was an attack on their academic freedom.

That left Bennet to balance the demands of a number of different constituencies. And the outcome, which has left much unresolved, prompted people on both sides to say that Bennet should have been more decisive.

``I think he should fully support Hope Weissman and her students and take a firm stand for academic freedom at Wesleyan,'' said student Brian Edwards-Tiekert, a senior.

But Walter Ebmeyer, an alumnus and grade school headmaster, said he was disappointed the course wasn't simply and permanently removed. He compared the administration's response to a recent situation at Harvard University, where the president forced out the head of the divinity school after pornography was found on his computer.

``It's just disappointing,'' said Ebmeyer, a 1956 graduate.

So would Bennet intervene if Weissman were to offer the course again and it were to be approved by the faculty?

For now he won't say and, clearly, he does not appear eager to become involved in academic matters normally handled by his faculty. But Bennet offers a caveat: ``I've also demonstrated I'm prepared to intervene if necessary.'