How Free is Academic Freedom?

Recently, I ran across two incidents that seem to test our notions of academic freedom, along with freedom of speech. They do not lend themselves to cut-and-dried solutions, but we ought to examine them both to get some perspective on these freedoms; the extent to which they should be mitigated and the extent to which they need to be defended.

The first instance came to my attention as a forwarded article from the Birmingham (Alabama) News. A geometry teacher from Corner High School in Jefferson County had used speculation on the best angle a shooter would need to take in order to shoot President Obama, presumably as an aid to his instruction on the subject of angles.

Someone reported the teacher, following which, the Secret Service sent an investigator. Now, before you get your undies in a bundle about yet another manifestation of Mr. Obama's plan to turn this nation into a Soviet-style dictatorship, bear in mind, first, that it is the Secret Service's primary mission to protect the president. Mr. Bush's, Mr. Clinton's, even Mr. Carter's Secret Service detail would have done exactly the same thing.

Second, read the rest of the story, which is that an agent interviewed the teacher and concluded there was no viable threat to the President. The geometry teacher in question moves about in society today, as free as you or I.

There still has been no final resolution about what the school district is going to do, if anything, about this incident, but enough has happened that we can think and talk about it.

If we value our freedom, we should keep in mind that free speech needs to be protected and kept free, even if it is speech we do not like. That certainly holds true in the area of adults exchanging ideas with adults. There is a different set of rules for children, though, isn't there?

Among adults, even people who hate the stuff would probably agree it is not worth the severe level of government repression that would be required to wipe out pornography, but it is and very clearly should be a crime to involve children in the practice in any way. That includes exhibiting it to them, let alone involving them.

Still, how is it that sex is more dangerous than murder? If that geometry teacher had showed his students a collection of filthy pictures, he would be in jail faster than you could say "Bob Guccione." But planting the idea of murder in their minds, apparently merits only a stern talking-to.

The members of the G.W. Bush Supreme Court, misguided as they typically are, recently ruled that a stone-cold killer like Lee Boyd Malvo, the Washington-area sniper, could not get the needle because he was a couple months shy of his 18^th birthday. They reasoned that the juvenile mind is insufficiently mature to fully grasp the ramifications of capital murder, even if the victims are just as dead.

Fine, if we are to assume that is the case, then how irresponsible is it to entertain the idea of assassinating a president for a room of teenage students, who, after all, are assembled to learn?

No, we are not such a police state that idly yakking about killing the president will land you behind bars, but I would shed no tear whatsoever if the yakker ended up being asked to find something else to do for a living.

The other item that came to my attention regarding this issue is a little more complex and a lot more serious (Unless, of course some pimply-faced kid actually takes a pot shot at Mr. Obama).

In the 2009 elections, Republicans gained back the ground they had lost in Virginia after the voters' punishment of the Bush regime. The Republicans succeeded in electing their candidates for governor and attorney general. The AG is a fellow named Ken Cuccinelli, who seems to be to the extreme right, even of his own party.

Recently Cuccinelli issued a series of civil investigative demands (or CIDs, the civil equivalent to subpoenas) against the University of Virginia for every last document a former professor of theirs, Michael Mann, produced for his extensive study of global warming. Mann had funded his work from grants, most of them from the federal government.

When Cuccinelli uncovered hacked heresay evidence that alleged a number of global warming studies had relied on tainted research, he suddenly became the caped crusader against taxpayer fraud.

The University of Virginia Board of Visitors (regents), to its credit, immediately filed papers for injunctive relief against the AG's demands. The petitioners cited, and properly so, the tremendous harm to academic freedom that such governmental harassment could bring if it were allowed to stand.

That is fine. That is what the University should do as the bastion of intellectual freedom they need to be. And it is patently obvious that Cuccinelli is seeking only to advance his reactionary agenda, as though the actual shrinkage of the ice caps were something that was filmed in a studio, much like the Moon landing.

All that said, though, suppose we play devil's advocate for just a moment. What if Mann did take all that governmental grant money to fund a crooked study? Are we to countenance such conduct in the name of academic freedom? How would he ever get called to account for it?

I do not pretend to know the answer to this one, much as the situation stinks like rotting mackerel.

Sources

The Birmingham News, Marie Leech and Carol Robinson

chicagotribune.com

The Washington Post/Express, 5/28/10

The Lynchburg News & Advance