Following more than a week of widespread media exposure, organizers of a controversial Web site have decided to change the site's content.
The Middle East Forum, the organization that started the Campus Watch Web site, announced Monday it would remove profiles of the instructors listed on the site as holding anti-Israeli biases. Instructors will instead be included in a section that evaluates institutions.
The site lists the University of California Berkeley as one of 14 institutions that "reject the views of most Americans and the enduring policies of the U.S. government about the Middle East" through anti-Israeli sentiment, the Web site stated.
"The site has elicited overwhelming support from the public -- but a furious response from academics" who did not like the inclusion of personal information, according to the Web site.
"It's largely the result of other professors really commenting on how this is both destructive for academic freedom but also smacks of McCarthyism," said UC Berkeley graduate student Snehal Shingavi, who was profiled by the site.
The organization hopes the change will allow users to focus less on the site's format and more on the "charges we are raising," said Daniel Pipes, the director of the forum, in a statement.