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GOP fails to get all of professor's email (UW-M chancellor cites academic freedom, privacy)
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ^ | April 1, 2011 | Don Walker

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 ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Extended News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: education; foi; uwm; walker; wisconsin; wisconsinshowdown
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
In other words it's perfectly OK for them to conspire in secret.

What a bunch of b.s.

21 posted on 04/02/2011 10:52:19 AM PDT by newzjunkey (Obama will be president until Fri, Jan 20, 2017.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

The law is there to protect them and to prosecute the rest of us.


22 posted on 04/03/2011 11:09:59 PM PDT by Del Rapier (W)
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