Preservation of Academic Freedom Resolution
Explanation and justification
Historically, Universities have defended freedom of inquiry, speech and criticism by a number of interrelated techniques. These have included faculty autonomy, both collective and individual; the right of faculty members to research and publish without approval or censorship, the creation of large libraries and their maintenance open to the public without ideological restriction, etc.
The combination of new technologies and new laws means that we must reaffirm our commitment to these ancient freedoms and the University’s role in preserving them.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror incident and in run-up to the Administration’s decision to commence war on Iraq, the so-called “Patriot Act” was passed. This act has a large number of provisions, among which are grants of new powers of investigation to the FBI and other federal investigative agencies.
Investigative power is easily misused. A witch-hunting or intolerant governmental official could use it to impose an effectual ban on particular books or websites by announcing that all those reading such a book or visiting such a site will be deemed suspicious. A new McCarthy could retroactively deem people who have read particular books or visited particular sites to be suspicious. In the spirit of the worst excesses of the past, those who dared to consider un-orthodox thought could be threatened with pariah status or worse.
But the spirit of free inquiry and the responsibilities of free republican government should bar government officials from such investigations. Professors, students and citizens should be entitled to study even the ideas of our enemies (how else are we to understand them and combat them or even determine if they have any merit?) without worrying that they would be classified as enemies themselves.
At the same time that the government has assumed new powers to seize records of private investigations, developing internet technology has vastly increased the number of such records that exist and the ease with which they can be searched. Apparently, current technology as used at the U of U records every transmission over the U’s internet gateway and maintains it in a central location for a fixed period of time (several months) in a searchable and identifiable form. An investigator could search a single computer to find all appearances of “Al-Quaeda” or “terror” or “infidel” or “bomb,” making every recipient of this memo into a potential target of a terror investigation.
Internet resources are easily abused. Users are often anonymous and anonymity creates the space for improper behavior to go unchallenged. As our email boxes are overwhelmed with viruses and spam, internet administrators, quite properly, respond by searching for ways to create norms of responsibility and to trace problems back to their sources. This resolution seeks to inform that effort, by pointing out the countervailing privacy and free speech considerations and ensuring that they, as well as policing concerns, remain central in infrastructure and policy planning.