Harvard professor Ben Edelman says he is “both puzzled and alarmed” that an editor at the Boston Globe’s Boston.com created T-shirts mocking his dispute over a Chinese food bill and apparently deleted a tweet alerting her that a “racist” email attributed to him might be a hoax.

Boston.com deputy editor Hilary Sargent was suspended for one week for designing the T-shirts for sale, the Globe reported.

In a statement reported by the Globe, Sargent apologized, saying, “I exercised poor judgment, and for that I am profoundly sorry. I accept the suspension, which I feel is appropriate, and look forward to returning to Boston.com.”

But Edelman, who declined to comment on the suspension, said he remains confused about how events unfolded leading to widespread derision of him on the Internet.

“Learning about Hilary’s now-deleted tweet and T-shirts has reinforced my sense that there’s more going on here than I yet understand,” Edelman, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, told the Herald yesterday in a series of emails from Singapore.

Edelman said he’s “trying to learn more about what happened and why.”

On Wednesday night, ?Boston.com pulled a story off its website that alleged Edelman had sent a racist email to Ran Duan, the owner of Sichuan Garden in Brookline, with whom he had a dispute over $4 on his bill. The story was headlined: “Ben Edelman Appears to Have Sent Racist Email to Chinese Restaurant Owner. Today.”

An editor’s note stated the story was pulled because Boston.com could not verify that Edelman sent the racist email. Officials at the website would not say whether any separate action was or will be taken against Sargent for posting the unverified story.

Edelman told the Herald yesterday that he never sent the racist email.

“To my eye, the emails look like obvious counterfeits — formatting different from genuine emails from me, plus not the kind of thing I’d write,” he said. “So far as I know Boston.com didn’t try to confirm their authenticity before posting them.”

Just hours after Sargent’s story was taken down, so was a tweet she posted that included a link to a T-shirt, which was briefly posted for sale for $20.95 on Internet shopping site Zazzle.com and featured the words “Didn’t go to HBS. Also didn’t lose my (expletive) over FOUR dollars.”

A screen grab sent by Edelman to the Herald also shows an exchange on Twitter — also subsequently deleted — where a user on the social media site asked Sargent whether she considered that “a troll” could have submitted a bogus email through a form on the restaurant’s website. “Yep,” Sargent tweeted back.

Sargent’s story included what purported to be the text of emails from Edelman containing a racial slur, which Boston.com said had been provided to the website by the restaurant.

Duan, who said he recently told his story to the national TV show “Inside Edition,” was also dismayed when he learned Sargent was promoting the vulgar T-shirt and said he was “trying to move on.”

“I know he’s taking a lot of heat for this and I wish him the best,” Duan said. “I gave him a complete refund. I sent him a check for $53 and I told him ‘I hope you do the right thing and donate this to the Greater Boston Food Bank.’ ”

When asked if he had sent ?the emails featured in Sargent’s story to Boston.com, Duan said, “My lawyer told me to say, ‘No comment.’ ”