CUNY Dean Fighting Yahoo Over Sexy Email Sabotage

Zulema Blair

A CUNY department chair who was fired from the university is going after Yahoo to give up the name of the student who sent scandalous emails to the school's brass. Dr. Zulema Blair claims that she was fired from her job in the Public Administration department of CUNY's Medgar Evers College following an anonymous email from a student claiming she was having sex with students and had a student's baby.

Blair says she had her tenure offer revoked two weeks after the email was sent to CUNY president William Pollard and other administrators last December, and was fired last month. “You can’t turn a whore into a housewife, but you can definitely turn one into a Dean,” the e-mail says, before calling Blair a member of the "elite Medgar 'Staff Slut' list" and writing "Inquiring minds wonder was that BEFORE or AFTER she passed him in her class?”

Blair, who has received community honors from Senator Eric Adams, says “This e-mail is slander. It’s horrific, and I want whoever sent this out to be punished. This is character assassination." She says she's never had a romantic relationship with anyone at Medgar Evers, student or otherwise. She does admit to knowing the student named in the email, but says their relationship was entirely appropriate. “He and others came to me to be their mentor. I’m close to all my students,” she said.

Blair has filed papers ordering Yahoo to reveal the identity of the account holder, who goes by disgruntledsue@yahoo.com. “The obvious conclusion according to the papers that were filed is that the e-mail was a motivating factor not to grant her tenure,” said Blair's attorney. An online petition was started two weeks ago asking for Blair to be re-appointed, and several students and colleagues have left comments supporting Blair. CUNY declined to comment about whether they investigated the emails claims or why Blair was let go.

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By Jamie Feldmar in News on September 7, 2011 12:59 PM

Comments [rss]

IM_js

@The Math Doctor, How stupid you be?!? only 5 people rated her. even so, her rating is average for the school. and there's no comments bout inappropriate behavior. and the site don't give no background info. she may not be a great teacher (or she might) but she don't deserve loss of tenure or firing over uninvestigated slander. i think they just was avoiding the cost of maintaining a prof on tenure. Yahoo shd give in; this is an obvious case where law demands it i think. But police wd hv 2 trace IP addy and stuff cuz lotsa ppl use fake names. Bet it wz someone jealous (teacher or staff) or rebuffed (anyone, maybe not even at school) or not graded well.

The Math Doctor

Check out her Rate My Professor profile.
Where did she get her doctorate from?
http://www.ratemyprofessors.co...

m015094

This story makes no sense. Do you really think the college would fire a department head over an anonymous email? (unless it were true)

IM_js

yeah, they wd, mf! when I wz in college, same thing happend to our dean, real nice women, cuz somebody sez in an anonimus email she wz the ladies bb coach's girl (who wz a lezzie), but she wzn't and she got fired (bb coach did too). She dint fight it cuz the coach wz a fiend & sed she cdn't handle all the stress of being outed more if she did. I knew this lady who wz my dean for many yrs after; she wz straight for sure. I herdz the college's prez sd the "brd thot they hd to take precautions to protect the student body even if sometimes misgided". It wasd a religious school so I guess they was homophobic, but I knew then that Christian is as Christian does and they weren't Christian to fire an innocent womin. By the way, yes, I did go to college. I was in an accident that messed with my word skills.

randomtransplant

I agree. Was there an actual story which was covered by reporters here I missed, or did it take the addition of 'yahoo' put it over the buzz-word threshold?

LtWorf

I never liked how some organizations put so much emphasis on anonymous messaging to get info on issues that wouldn't normally come up through regular channels. It gives a method for someone with malicious intent to shame people without cause. If she was indeed fired without proper cause, she should sue the accuser AND the school.