When Oleg Viro and Burglind Joricke resigned in February from their tenured positions at Sweden's Uppsala University, administrators hoped that their departure would restore tranquility to the strife-riven mathematics department. Instead the manner in which the highly regarded university brought about the professors' departure, for reasons that seemed to stem largely from their knack for raising the hackles of some of their colleagues, has alarmed many outsiders and caused soul-searching at home. Anders Hallberg, who became rector of the university last July, says the two professors' behavior toward their colleagues amounted to harassment. Mr. Hallberg insists that his actions had nothing to do with curtailing the academic freedom of the two professors, and everything to do with protecting the rights of their colleagues who, he says, felt harassed by the poisonous atmosphere the two had created. Still, he acknowledges that the discord in Uppsala's math department could have its roots in a fundamental clash of cultural styles. Perhaps, he says, when the university hires other faculty members from abroad, "we should take better care of them and teach them better about our system."