May 18, 2015 11:57 AM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Duke University placed Jerry Hough, an 80-year-old professor of political science, on leave for a comment he left online in response to a New York Times op-ed.

The Times' editorial board posted a piece titled "How Racism Doomed Baltimore" on Saturday, May 9 and Hough's comment appeared on the newspaper's website the next day. Whereas the op-ed pointed to a history of police brutality in Baltimore as contributing to the ugliness of the recent rioting, Hough explicitly stated off the top: "This editorial is what is wrong."

"I am a professor at Duke University. Every Asian student has a very simple old American first name that symbolizes their desire for integration," he wrote. "Virtually every black has a strange new name that symbolizes their lack of desire for integration. The amount of Asian-white dating is enormous and so surely will be the intermarriage. Black-white dating is almost non-existemt because of the ostracism by blacks of anyone who dates a white.

"It was appropriate that a Chinese design won the competition for the Martin Luther King state. King helped them overcome. The blacks followed Malcolm X."

Hough's comment spread throughout the Internet, including criticism from a colleague, but the professor did not do any interviews until he addressed the matter in an email to the Charlotte News and Observer.

"I don't know if you will find anyone to agree with me," he said. "Anyone who says anything is a racist and ignorant as I was called by a colleague. The question is whether you want to get involved in the harassment and few do. I am 80 and figure I can speak the truth as I see it. Ignorant I am not.

"The point I was raising was why the Asians who were oppressed did so well and are integrating so well, and the blacks are not doing as well," his email said. "The comments have convinced me to write a book which will add the Asians to all the research I did on blacks."

A spokesperson for Duke told the Observer the school's Faculty Handbook fully allows professors to speak their opinions publicly. As in Hough's case, the school also states it does not have to stand behind whatever their professors say.

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