BILL HOBBS UPDATE: The blowback continues — see the comments to this post by Michael Silence of the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
But in a comment to this post Hobbs observes:
I think we should all just let it go and move on. I’m going to be fine. I already had plenty of consulting work, and more is coming in. This incident hasn’t hurt me.
Belmont was a great place to work, I did some amazing work there that will make the resume look great, and the university was gracious at the end. . . .
If I had been a PR advisor telling Belmont what to do in this situation, rather than the employee involved, I would have told them to part ways with the employee.
I also would have told them that doing so would likely spark severe blowback in the blogosphere.
As it did.
UPDATE: To Belmont University’s undoubted delight, the story has made Inside Higher Education:
To date, several American colleges — among them Century College of Minnesota, New York University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — have found themselves caught up in controversies over the Danish cartoons and how to respond to them, but no one besides Hobbs has lost a job.
Hobbs announced his resignation from Belmont in a posting on another blog in which he said that his departure was a “mutual” decision and praised the university. But many commenters there and elsewhere criticized the university for not sticking up for Hobbs. His departure from Belmont is being called McCarthyite, “a travesty of justice,” and evidence that “the barbarians are truly at the gate.” (Few of the comments have noted that Hobbs worked in public relations at Belmont.)
Via e-mail, Hobbs declined to comment, but said that this online account — which questioned how his removal was consistent with Belmont’s values — was accurate.
Jason Rogers, vice president for administration and university counsel at Belmont, said that it was university policy not to discuss personnel matters and that he could say little more than that Hobbs was no longer employed there.
Asked about criticism that the university’s handling of the situation conflicted with free expression, Rogers said: “The university is committed to freedom of expression. This particular situation isn’t about freedom of expression. It’s about a personnel matter.”
Uh huh.
MORE: Bill Quick: “How stupid can you get? They need a good PR guy in the worst way. Oh, wait a minute. They fired him.”