A porn site bookmark cost a UM professor his job. An online petition wants him back
A Change.org petition had over 1,500 signatures in one day demanding the University of Miami rehire a professor whose porn site bookmark showed up during an online class.
John Zhang resigned, the school confirmed Thursday.
The petition went up Wednesday after Tuesday’s story in The Miami Hurricane student newspaper about Zhang, a Zoom class and “busty college girl.”
As reported by the Hurricane, Zhang resigned in the fallout from a March 26 incident. During his business analytics online class, he shared his screen with his students. A few students noticed the partially hidden bookmark “busty college girl fu...”
A student made a TikTok video of it that got widely seen before being removed. The university newspaper reported Zhang said to his next class, “I don’t know how it happened. I didn’t see it, I’m pretty sure everybody else did…My apologies to the class.”
Soon after, Zhang was gone — gone from teaching classes, gone from the school website, gone even from LinkedIn.
“The University of Miami aggressively investigates all complaints of inappropriate behavior or sexual harassment,” the school stated in a Thursday email to the Miami Herald. “After receiving a complaint through the University’s ethics hotline, the incident was investigated by the Office of the Provost, Title IX investigator and Miami Herbert Business School.”
The Change.org petition, started by Austin Torres, says, “People make mistakes, are sexual beings, and should not be fired when no true porn was shared. We no longer live in the 18th century and individuals are allowed to have a personal, sexual life. This was obviously a mistake.”
One female student interviewed by The Hurricane said, “It was the fact he is a college professor and saved a video to his bookmarks describing college girls. A video to watch over and over again.”
Petition signer “Stephany Edwards” wrote the school’s reaction was “an overreaction based on embarrassment rather than actual harm done.”
This story was originally published April 30, 2020 at 12:57 PM.
