‘Academic Freedom’ Offers Little Protection Against New Efforts to Obtain Professors’ E-Mails

by E Wayne Ross on March 30, 2011

The Chronicle: ‘Academic Freedom’ Offers Little Protection Against New Efforts to Obtain Professors’ E-Mails

Recent efforts by conservative-leaning groups to obtain the e-mails of Michigan and Wisconsin public-university professors have shed light on this much: Citing a need to protect “academic freedom” is, in itself, unlikely to help the universities avoid complying with requests for e-mails under state open-records laws.