Public University Prof. Runs Sex Tourism Website

In the name of preserving the right to free speech, officials at a major public university in southern California have long permitted a tenured professor to operate a Thai sex tourism web site.

The economics professor (Kenneth Ng) at California State University, Northridge, a taxpayer-funded institution with an enrollment of about 36,000, offers men interested in Thailand’s sex tourism industry advice on how to meet women in bars, negotiating with prostitutes and where to find the best ones.

The graphic web site features pictures of scantily clad women and a tutorial on how to get more efficient and cheaper sex in the “Thailand Girl Scene,” according to the local newspaper that broke the story last week. University administrators have known about Ng’s extracurricular activities for at least a year but took no action in order to preserve his right to free speech.

There will be no intervention and Ng won’t be disciplined as long as his outside work doesn’t involve public resources, university officials said when the story’s publication ignited fury last week. Ng stood by his internet business and refused to take down the site amid outrage from students, fellow teachers and the general public.

A few days later the university finally took action and Thailand’s “girl scene” website shut down albeit with major resistance. Cal State officials thanked Ng for “voluntarily” removing the site because it was having a deleterious effect on the university’s reputation and not because its contents were unsuitable for public discourse.

The 50-year-old professor, who was granted tenure in 1992, has been in trouble before. A few years ago he settled a legal case with a 22-year-old female student who accused him of posting unauthorized pictures and fictional erotic tales of her on a website.

Ng is the second public university professor in the Golden State to be involved in controversy in the last few months. In November, an activist Chicano teacher at the University of California San Diego spent work hours and resources creating special technology— Transborder Immigrant Tool—to help Mexicans enter the United States illegally.