Prof From E. Lansing Resigns at Northwestern Over Academic Freedom

A Northwestern University professor stepped down Tuesday to protest her lack of academic freedom at the Feinberg School of Medicine, according to a Chicago Tribune report.

»Via the Chicago Tribune

The resignation of Alicia Dreger, a part-time professor who taught clinical medical humanities and bioethics, is in response to the university’s handling of a 2014 article in Atrium, the school’s bioethics journal, the report stated.

Initially, the article—a first-person essay written by an educator who claimed to have a sexual experience with a nurse while he was a paralysis patient in 1978—was removed from the journal’s website, because the university was afraid of a possible backlash, the report stated. Dreger threatened to go pubic about the removal, and Northwestern restored the essay on the site, the report added.

The final straw for Dreger, however, came when an oversight committee of faculty members and other individuals recently was created for Atrium, the report stated. The university says these types of panels are common for journals, the report added.

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The university would not comment about Dreger’s resignation, calling it a personnel matter, according to the report.

Dreger’s not new to garnering attention for her outspoken views. In April, she grabbed headlines for live-tweeting critical remarks about a pro-abstinence speaker at her son’s high school in East Lansing, Mich., where Dreger lives. She was then banned from attending activities at her son’s school because of a profanity-laced confrontation with the speaker after the event.