Posted on 04/02/2011 1:23:14 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
....[Chancellor Biddy] Martin wrote that the request by Stephen Thompson, the state GOP's deputy executive director, was a legitimate request under the open records law. But she said the university decided to exclude some records for privacy reasons,....
"We are also excluding what we consider to be the private email exchanges among scholars that fall within the orbit of academic freedom and all that is entailed by it. Academic freedom is the freedom to pursue knowledge and develop lines of argument without fear of reprisal for controversial findings and without the premature disclosure of those ideas," she wrote.
Martin added that exposing an exchange of ideas to public exposure "puts academic freedom in peril and threatens the processes by which knowledge is created. The consequence for our state will be the loss of the most talented and creative faculty who will choose to leave for universities where collegial exchange and the development of ideas can be undertaken without fear of premature exposure or reprisal for unpopular positions."
....Cronon had written about Gov. Scott Walker and the ongoing budget controversy in Madison on his personal blog on March 15 and suggested that a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council should be studied further. That group works on model legislation of interest to conservative legislators around the country.
Two days later, Thompson made his request for Cronon emails dating back to Jan. 1.
Cronon also wrote an op-ed on March 22 in The New York Times about the budget controversy and Walker.
....In a statement, Mark Jefferson, the [GOP] party's executive director, thanked the university for complying with Thompson's request and for Martin's statement.
"We share her belief that university faculty are not above the rules prohibiting the use of state resources for political purposes," Jefferson said....
(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
[excerpt] "Mr. Walker’s conduct has provoked a level of divisiveness and bitter partisan hostility the likes of which have not been seen in this state since at least the Vietnam War. Many citizens are furious at their governor and his party, not only because of profound policy differences, but because these particular Republicans have exercised power in abusively nontransparent ways that represent such a radical break from the state’s tradition of open government.
Perhaps that is why — as a centrist and a lifelong independent — I have found myself returning over the past few weeks to the question posed by the lawyer Joseph N. Welch during the hearings that finally helped bring down another Wisconsin Republican, Joe McCarthy, in 1954: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
Scott Walker is not Joe McCarthy. Their political convictions and the two moments in history are quite different. But there is something about the style of the two men — their aggressiveness, their self-certainty, their seeming indifference to contrary views — that may help explain the extreme partisan reactions they triggered. McCarthy helped create the modern Democratic Party in Wisconsin by infuriating progressive Republicans, imagining that he could build a national platform by cultivating an image as a sternly uncompromising leader willing to attack anyone who stood in his way. Mr. Walker appears to be provoking some of the same ire from adversaries and from advocates of good government by acting with a similar contempt for those who disagree with him.
The turmoil in Wisconsin is not only about bargaining rights or the pension payments of public employees. It is about transparency and openness. It is about neighborliness, decency and mutual respect. Joe McCarthy forgot these lessons of good government, and so, I fear, has Mr. Walker. Wisconsin’s citizens have not." [end excerpt]
So what is the penalty in Wisconsin for refusing an open records request?
So if you can style it as an academic exercise it’s A-OK to develop rhetoric to undermine a sitting politician on the university’s time?
“Academic freedom” here is a code word for “Marxist Conspiracy”.
“It is about neighborliness, decency and mutual respect.”
The union thugs are just the opposite of the above. Leave it to liberals to accuse others of what they are and do!
I expect they probably read like the “hide the decline” global warming email’s. The withheld emails most likely “hide the communist advocacy,” spiced up with personal insults toward others and plans to advance their socialist agenda by hook or by crook.
A Conservative professor would not be shielded by Chancellor “Biddy.”
Bump!
Bump!
ten lashes with a piece of macaroni and cheese?
bump...
Ah - what did I do now?
So, if I’m offering my students good grades for sex or bribing a politician or blackmailing someone, I can claim “academic freedom” to hide the emails? Cool!!
The idea is that the laws on disclosure of information to the public only apply to one side in the dispute. Our universities have become bastions of privilege and intellectual dishonesty.
That’s all “academic freedom” has meant since the development and extension of the tenure system. Tenure means that as long as you are part of the Marxist Conspiracy, you are able to get and keep your academic job, and fellow members of the Marxist Conspiracy will make sure nobody who disagrees with this version of “academic freedom” will ever have an academic career.
And I also believe government should NOT be funding or in charge of education.
Thanks Cincinatus’ Wife.
Translation: “If you all found out what we’re plotting behind the scenes, you’d hang us all.”
If “many” and “furious” are the only legal requirements needed to ignore the law, then I guarantee you that outside of the carefully selected privileged union thugs they are attempting to portray as “majority”, the real “many furious” are taxpaying tea partiers in spirit, and tired of the communist sh*t.
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