Using the Open Records Law To Intimidate Critics

[ElNono]

Using the Open Records Law To Intimidate Critics


"On March 15, Professor Bill Cronon posted his first blog. The subject was the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council in influencing recent legislation in Wisconsin and across the country. Less than two days later, his university received a communication formally requesting under the state's Open Records Law copies of all emails he sent or received pertaining to matters raised in the blog. Remarkably, the request was sent to the university's legal office by Stephan Thompson of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, with no effort to obscure the political motivations behind it. In a recent editorial, the New York Times notes that demanding copies of e-mails and other do ents is the latest technique used politically to silence critics."

[Winehole23]

Is Mr. Cronon a public employee? Don't public records belong to the people?

While I agree that the request seems to have only a flimsy basis or none at all, it's similarly hard to construct any reasonable expectation of privacy here. Now, there may be a political price to pay for using FOIA to intimidate critics (rightfully so, IMO), but perhaps you will be so kind as to point out what is legally improper about the request? AFAIK FOIA requests may be lodged for good reasons, bad ones or none at all.

[Winehole23]

Slimy and wrong, yes. Legally improper, no.

[Winehole23]

From the comment thread at Volokh:

Borealis says:

FOIA and open records laws work both ways, and they apply to the royal university professors as much as the lowly government bureaucrat. Funny how what goes around, comes around.


But the Republicans are also stupid by submitting the request in such a notable manner. They should just have a concubine or law firm submit the request like the most other politically active people do.

[boutons_deux]

A Repug and VRWC key objective is smash-mouth, head-kickin, scorched-earth elimination of any opposition, no co-existence, no loyal/good-faith opposition permitted, no fair play, no civil disagreement and debate, no matter how small, to their VRWC-enriching, citizen-impoverishing strategy.

btw, Repugs, "Where are the jobs?"

[Winehole23]

Far from eliminating or even marginalizing Mr Cronon, GOP tactics seem only to have emboldened him and have heightened his visibility.

[boutons_deux]

WI Repugs, along with MI and OH, are setting examples for other Repug states. I'm sure plenty of academics are intimidated by the Cronon example, no matter how Cronon reacts and is treated. Will his university grovel before the Repug fishing expedition?

Cronon's "crime" is nothing compared to SCOTUS bags like Scalia and Thomas pal-ing around with and speaking extreme right-wing, corporate, VRWC groups.

Taxpayer-paid SCOTUS justices can be overtly political and politicized, but public university professors can't be?

[ElNono]

Yeah, I'm on the fence on this one. While I'm sure the GOP is merely conducting a fishing expedition, I think oversight is important. Interesting story.

[boutons_deux]

American Thought Police

The hard right — which these days is more or less synonymous with the Republican Party — has a modus operandi when it comes to scholars expressing views it dislikes: never mind the substance, go for the smear. And that demand for copies of e-mails is obviously motivated by no more than a hope that it will provide something, anything, that can be used to subject Mr. Cronon to the usual treatment.

The Cronon affair, then, is one more indicator of just how reflexively vindictive, how un-American, one of our two great political parties has become.

The demand for Mr. Cronon’s correspondence has obvious parallels with the ongoing smear campaign against climate science and climate scientists, which has lately relied heavily on supposedly damaging quotations found in e-mail records.

we should worry a lot about the wider effect of attacks like the one he’s facing.

Legally, Republicans may be within their rights: Wisconsin’s open records law provides public access to e-mails of government employees, although the law was clearly intended to apply to state officials, not university professors. But there’s a clear chilling effect when scholars know that they may face witch hunts whenever they say things the G.O.P. doesn’t like.

Someone like Mr. Cronon can stand up to the pressure. But less eminent and established researchers won’t just become reluctant to act as concerned citizens, weighing in on current debates; they’ll be deterred from even doing research on topics that might get them in trouble.

What’s at stake here, in other words, is whether we’re going to have an open national discourse in which scholars feel free to go wherever the evidence takes them, and to contribute to public understanding. Republicans, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, are trying to shut that kind of discourse down. It’s up to the rest of us to see that they don’t succeed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/op...gewanted=print

[baseline bum]

Hence, the reason tenure is so vital to university professors.

[boutons_deux]

GOP smacked down on Wisconsin emails

We are excluding records involving students because they are protected under FERPA [the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act].

We are excluding exchanges that fall outside the realm of the faculty member's job responsibilities and that could be considered personal pursuant to Wisconsin Supreme Court case law.

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.

To our faculty, I say: Continue to ask difficult questions, explore unpopular lines of thought and exercise your academic freedom, regardless of your point of view. As always, we will take our cue from the bronze plaque on the walls of Bascom Hall. It calls for the "continual and fearless sifting and winnowing" of ideas. It is our tradition, our defining value, and the way to a better society.

Their (Americans) one primary and predominant object is to cultivate and settle these prairies, forests, and vast waste lands. The striking and peculiar characteristic of American society is, that it is not so much a democracy as a huge commercial company for the discovery, cultivation, and capitalization of its enormous territory.... The United States are primarily a commercial society ... and only secondarily a nation...

http://www.salon.com/technology/how_...ase/index.html

[Marcus Bryant]

Another example of "VRWC"/El Chupacabra intimidation:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/pol...e%26position=1

[boutons_deux]

Another example of "VRWC"/El Chupacabra intimidation:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/pol...e%26position=1

Excellent! Dems Breitbarting the Repugs, pushing back against Repug dirty tricks How's it feel?

Of course, more likely it's that this could be Brown falsely accusing the Dems of Breitbarting.

[Marcus Bryant]

Or, it's been used by both parties for a long time. But that would reflect reality.

[Marcus Bryant]

Of course, more likely it's that this could be Brown falsely accusing the Dems of Breitbarting.

Of course. It could never be a stupid decision. It has to be a conspiracy.

[TeyshaBlue]

Excellent! Dems Breitbarting the Repugs, pushing back against Repug dirty tricks How's it feel?

Of course, more likely it's that this could be Brown falsely accusing the Dems of Breitbarting.

lol @ the "enlightened" progressive.

[boutons_deux]

Why would the lefties use a knife when the Repug gun fetishists use guns?