Jonathan S. Tobin: Academic Politics, not Academic Freedom, at Issue in Michigan FOIA Requests
[Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of Commentary magazine.]
The Freedom of Information Act requests made by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy about professors at the University of Michigan, Michigan State, and Wayne State Universities is drawing predictable screams of horror from those who think these probes are intended to silence critics of Republicans who have advocated for changes in collective bargaining by public employee unions. The New York Times quotes Greg Scholtz, the director of academic freedom for the American Association of University Professors as saying that this “will have a chilling effect on academic freedom. We’ve never seen FOIA requests used like this before.”...
Cronon and the others may not be enjoying this scrutiny but it should be understood that what is at stake here is a question of academic politics, not academic freedom.
While the left is more accustomed to using FOIA requests to embarrass state and federal officials and bureaucrats whose actions they dislike, there is nothing sinister in the tactic being turned on liberals who happen to collect their state checks at a college campus. If, as their critics suspect, these professors have been using their state-funded positions to take an active part in the partisan political squabble between Republicans and their Democratic foes then they have violated the law....
Read entire article at Commentary
The Freedom of Information Act requests made by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy about professors at the University of Michigan, Michigan State, and Wayne State Universities is drawing predictable screams of horror from those who think these probes are intended to silence critics of Republicans who have advocated for changes in collective bargaining by public employee unions. The New York Times quotes Greg Scholtz, the director of academic freedom for the American Association of University Professors as saying that this “will have a chilling effect on academic freedom. We’ve never seen FOIA requests used like this before.”...
Cronon and the others may not be enjoying this scrutiny but it should be understood that what is at stake here is a question of academic politics, not academic freedom.
While the left is more accustomed to using FOIA requests to embarrass state and federal officials and bureaucrats whose actions they dislike, there is nothing sinister in the tactic being turned on liberals who happen to collect their state checks at a college campus. If, as their critics suspect, these professors have been using their state-funded positions to take an active part in the partisan political squabble between Republicans and their Democratic foes then they have violated the law....