Law Professor Who Sent Anal-Bead Porn To Her Students Blames Everyone But Herself

What did Drexel University's investigation into "Beadgate" conclude, and what does Professor Lisa McElroy have to say for herself?

Lisa McElroy, the professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law who accidentally sent her students a link to a pornographic video, is back in the news. First, as reported by the Associated Press, an investigation conducted by Drexel confirmed that the professor’s porn propagation was unintentional. According to a statement that a university spokesperson sent to Above the Law, “The fact-checking process confirmed that Professor Lisa McElroy sent the link in error and cleared the way for her to continue her academic and research responsibilities.”

Second, Professor McElroy penned a piece for the Washington Post about the controversy that over the weekend was the most-read article on the Post’s website. Did she reveal how exactly she mistakenly sent a video called “She Loves Her Anal Beads” to a bunch of legal-writing students? Alas, no. Instead, she lashes out at everyone who had anything to do with her infamous indiscretion — the students who clicked on the Pornhub link (which she sent them), the students who mentioned her mishap to the media, the journalists who published stories about it, and the readers who consumed those stories. She argues that everyone stripped her of her dignity, for a story without any news value:

[W]hat’s really fascinating about this story is not that a law professor inadvertently shared a porn link with her students. What’s newsworthy is that, actually, there was nothing newsworthy about it. What happened was, in the grand scheme, pretty trivial. My students are adults. The link was quickly removed. There was nothing illegal in the video.

I concur in part and dissent in part. I agree that Professor McElroy’s error was trivial. When I broke the story, I vigorously defended her, arguing that she made an innocent mistake that anyone could have made and that an investigation wasn’t warranted.

But I respectfully dissent from her assertion that Beadgate wasn’t newsworthy. Here at Above the Law, we first heard about Professor McElroy’s porn email on Tuesday, March 31, the day that she sent it. We didn’t write about it immediately because we harbored doubts about its newsworthiness. But then we learned that the incident triggered a university investigation, pursuant to Title IX and Drexel’s sexual harassment and misconduct policy, and suspension of Professor McElroy from teaching duties. Once Drexel launched an investigation, the story acquired news value for a website like Above the Law, which covers legal academia very closely, even obsessively. So that’s why our story didn’t appear until Friday, April 3, after Drexel confirmed the existence of its investigation to us. (General-interest news outlets like the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Associated Press covered Beadgate too, once Drexel acknowledged an investigation.)

Sure, there’s an undeniable schadenfreude component to this story, but it also presents several important and interesting issues. Read my initial post, criticizing Drexel’s decision to launch an investigation and tying it to broader problems in legal academia. Then read my interview of Professor Michael A. Olivas, an expert on education law, who analyzed the purpose and history of Title IX before concluding that Drexel’s decision to investigate was proper. Finally, read Tamara Tabo’s excellent essay, The Tyranny of Title IX. Blending Beadgate with her own experience with a Title IX investigation, Professor Tabo wondered whether enforcement of Title IX has gone too far and whether men accused of misconduct are judged more harshly than women. Taken collectively, our Beadgate stories explore such issues as gender discrimination, sexual harassment, political correctness, and academic freedom. There’s so much going on here that I wouldn’t be surprised to see Beadgate used as fodder for an issue-spotting exam in a class on education law.

If you go into the 650-plus comments on Professor McElroy’s Washington Post op-ed and sort by “Most Liked,” you’ll see many readers questioning her decision to write the WaPo piece. Professor John F. Banzhaf III, covered in the pages of Above the Law for a similar screw-up of his own, wrote to us and echoed these sentiments:

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Several years ago, ATL gleefully reported how my Torts students, who were supposed to download from my private web site .html files that were projected in class to illustrate various points of law, were instead able to access a .jpg file with a nude picture of Britney Spears. Although I quickly took down the picture so that additional students would not be embarrassed (or titillated) when they went exploring on the site where they should not be, it never occurred to me to criticize the students, ATL, nor the other media outlets which picked up the story for my mistake (which I quickly explained to the students, and the explanation then appeared on ATL).

In sharp contrast, after ATL reported that Professor Lisa T. McElroy of Drexel used TWEN to send to her students a link to a pornographic web site related to anal beads (her students called it “Beadgate”), she took to the Washington Post to blame virtually everyone else: the students who discovered the problem, ATL for reporting it, other media outlets for picking up the story, and the apparent lack of “dignity of the intended audience.” However, she apparently forgot to explain how a link to a pornographic web site about anal beads came to be substituted for her link to an article about brief writing.

Professor McElroy: you portray yourself as the victim of a “public shaming,” but it’s only shaming if you let yourself be shamed. So don’t. Being coy about how your screw-up happened only feeds the sense of shame surrounding porn.

Porn is a normal and healthy part of human sexuality. To quote the great Avenue Q song, “The internet is for porn.” Millions of Americans view porn sexually explicit materials on the web. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m among the millions — and I’m in good company, joined by such legal luminaries as Professor Banzhaf and Judge Alex Kozinski.

So instead of dancing around your own porn consumption (or that of someone else who uses your computer), just own it. Try these words on for size, Professor McElroy: “I love my anal beads. And tenure.”

UPDATE (10:50 a.m.): Please note Professor Banzhaf’s clarification, posted in the comments: the nude photo he used (after redacting) to illustrate a defamation decision “was downloaded from an ordinary news site and not a porno site.” There’s also an argument that Judge Kozinski’s cache of nude photos wasn’t porn because the material was more about humor than titillation. So I’ve replaced “porn” with “sexually explicit materials” in that sentence.

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After a public shaming, reclaiming my dignity [Washington Post]
Professor ‘Mortified’ After Sending Porn Link to Students [Associated Press]

Earlier: Law Professor Who Sent Anal-Bead Porn To Her Students Now Under Investigation
A ‘Beadgate’ Update: Did Drexel Really Have To Investigate The Law Professor Who Accidentally Sent Porn To Her Students?
The Tyranny Of Title IX: How The Case Of The Porn-Linking Law Professor Could Be Worse
Nude Pictures: The Best Way to Help Students Study for Finals