We have recently covered several stories of professors who have gained some unwanted notoriety once emails they sent became public.

Be prepared for more of these revelations, as experts note that little is private in the Internet age.

Rachel Slocum, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, was stunned earlier this month when what she thought was an innocuous if impetuous e-mail to students about why they couldn’t access census data to complete an important course assignment became national news.

Her e-mail, which blamed the “Republican/Tea Party controlled House of Representatives” for the shutdown and consequent U.S. Census Bureau website blackout, appeared on Fox News, the Daily Caller and in her local paper, after a student posted a screen shot on Twitter. It also caused uproar on campus, prompting numerous calls and e-mails to Chancellor Joe Gow, who sent an e-mail to students, faculty and staff distancing the university from Slocum’s “highly partisan” comments.

Slocum said she probably wrote the e-mail too quickly upon hearing her students couldn’t access the site, without sufficient explanation of her political reference. But the chain reaction was hard to believe, given that she never intended – or thought – that her e-mail would be seen by anyone outside of her sociology course.

“This had never happened to me before so it was a new, unexpected and unpleasant experience,” Slocum said in an e-mail. “And I didn’t expect it because my e-mails to students are the boring stuff of ‘Why didn’t you turn in that’ or ‘Here are some important points to remember,’ rather than anything that might cause fury on the Internet.”

Politics aside, Slocum’s case and others like it in recent months raise an important question: In the age of social media and smartphones, what expectations – if any – should professors have for privacy for lectures and communications intended for students?

Very little, said Slocum – but that’s “an acknowledgement of fact, of the way the Internet works, rather than a normative statement.”

Privacy and intellectual property experts agreed, saying that such communications are fair game for students to share. Higher education has a complicated relationship with copyright and other ownership questions, experts said, due to historical concerns about academic freedom. Legally, however, most all of what professors say to students in lectures and in e-mails would pass the “fair use” doctrine test, making it O.K. for students to record, share and comment on even copyrighted material for non-commercial purposes.