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Scholar says denying emeritus status is uncommon
Eric Rasmusen, a well-known professor of economics at Indiana University, recently said he was denied his application for emeritus status.
Rasmusen retired in 2021, but decided not to apply for emeritus status until last year when the university stopped offering free access to online journal subscriptions for faculty who were retired but not emeritus, Rasmusen wrote recently on his substack.
“If I continue to be denied access, I will accept that,” he told The College Fix in a recent interview. “It isn’t fair, but I can ask friends at Indiana University and elsewhere to look up scholarly articles if I need them.”
Typically, professors who retire in good status are awarded the title “emeritus,” but Rasmusen said he was not. He believes the answer to this question goes back to 2019 and a controversial social media post about men and IQ.
When asked if he has considered taking legal action, Rasmusen said he does not plan to.
“There are too many lawsuits. They consume your energy and leave a bitter taste even when you win,” he said.
Instead, Rasmusen said he prefers the approach of publicity or “an appeal to their better nature.”
The College Fix also contacted Indiana University’s media relations office, Board of Trustees, and Faculty Council twice over the past two weeks, asking what the university policy is for granting emeritus status, if the timing of a request is typically a criterion in determination of emeritus status, and whether there is a process for appealing the decision, as well as about Rasmusen. None responded.
Meanwhile, National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood told The Fix that denial of emeritus status is uncommon because “conferring such status on a retiring professor is essentially costless.”
Wood said in a recent email that “the only reason to deny it” would be “the danger of reputational damage” such as “credible accusations of plagiarism, research fraud, rape, or other criminal felonies …”
“An argument might also be made that a college or university that is in the midst of attempting to raise its academic profile might want to withhold emeritus status from faculty who are conspicuously lacking in academic merit,” Wood said.
Rasmusen, however, has not faced such accusations nor, as he pointed out, is he lacking in academic prowess.
“My book, Games and Information, has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and Chinese (twice). Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Oxford, and Tokyo considered me worthy of holding visiting positions. I’m googleable. So I’m pretty good. But even though it was given to all previous retirees in my department from time immemorial, I didn’t qualify for emeritus status,” he wrote on his substack in March.
When asked about discrimination against conservative professors in higher education, Wood told The Fix that a conservative professor “may well encounter discrimination during tenure review, promotion, teaching assignments, and a host of other ways. The Rasmusen case, however, is the only one I have heard of in which a conservative professor, having survived all those sorts of attacks, has been denied emeritus status.”
Wood told The College Fix that “Rasmusen’s account of that denial is highly credible.”
Meanwhile, Rasmusen, who is conservative and a Christian, said he believes the emeritus status issue is linked to a controversy over his social media posts.
On Nov. 7, 2019, Rasmusen tweeted a quote from an article titled “Are Women Destroying Academia? Probably.” The quote read, “Geniuses are overwhelmingly male because they combine outlier high IQ with moderately low Agreeableness and moderately low Conscientiousness.”
The post received attention when Twitter user @SheRatesDogs, a popular account relating stories of bad dating experiences, reposted the tweet indignantly.
A few days after Rasmusen’s post, Provost Lauren Robel sent a letter to her colleagues, which The College Fix unpacked in an earlier article, cautioning against what she termed Rasmusen’s “vile and stupid” posts on his personal social media.
The provost accused Rasmusen of using “his private social media accounts to disseminate his racist, sexist, and homophobic views,” believing “women do not belong in the workplace, particularly not in academia,” and “that black students are generally unqualified for attendance at elite institutions,” in addition to other “stunningly ignorant” views.
At the time, Robel related her concern that “students who are women, gay, or of color could reasonably be concerned that someone with Professor Rasmusen’s expressed prejudices and biases would not give them a fair shake in his classes.”
However, the provost also said the university “cannot, nor would we, fire Professor Rasmusen for his posts as a private citizen, as vile and stupid as they are, because the First Amendment of the United States Constitution forbids us to do so.”
Instead, she said the university would enact a policy ensuring students were not required to take his classes, as well as institute a “double-blind grading” system Rasmusen was required to adhere to.
In 2021, two years after the memo’s release, Rasmusen retired.
He did not at the time receive emeritus status but made no move to oppose the decision, instead choosing to “wait and bring the denial up at some apt moment, ” he wrote on his substack in March.
The “apt moment” arrived in 2025, when the university closed Rasmusen’s access to online scholarly journals due to his lack of emeritus status. He applied formally, and was told his request could not be considered, according to an email from the university, which he published on his substack.
Rasmusen wrote that his current research involves immigrants and crime in Japan. But because he does not have emeritus status, a decision he believes is linked to the 2019 controversy, doing that research has become more difficult and expensive, he wrote.
Previously, Rasmusen responded line-by-line to Robel’s memo, which is published on his substack.
To the label of “racist, sexist, and homophobic,” Rasmusen responded: “I oppose admitting people to universities based on their race; I open doors for ladies; I say that sodomy is a sin. I suppose that’s enough to qualify me for those insults under the Provost’s personal definitions.”
He contradicted Robel’s claim that he opposed women in academia, telling readers that he “did not object” to his wife teaching at Eastern Illinois University. Rather, he stated that working in academia is “a vocation more compatible with motherhood than most jobs.”
To the statement that “he believes that black students are generally unqualified for attendance at elite institutions,” Rasmusen clarified his belief that it “is clear is that *some* students are admitted because of their race — which means that others are denied because of their race … Affirmative action may be right; it may be wrong; but that’s what it is.”
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