Michigan Think Tank Asks 3 Universities for Labor Professors’ E-Mails

by E Wayne Ross on March 29, 2011

The Chronicle: Michigan Think Tank Asks 3 Universities for Labor Professors’ E-Mails

A free market-oriented think tank in Michigan has sent the state’s three largest public universities open-records requests for any e-mails from their labor-studies faculty members dealing with the debate over collective bargaining in Wisconsin.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, based in Midland, Mich., sent the requests on Friday to labor-studies centers at Michigan State University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Wayne State University. The boilerplate wording on the requests, as first reported on Tuesday by the blog Talking Points Memo, asks the universities to provide all e-mails from the employees and contractors of their labor-studies centers containing the words “Scott Walker,” “Wisconsin,” “Madison,” and “Maddow,” in reference to Rachel Maddow, the liberal commentator on MSNBC. Mr. Walker is the Republican governor of Wisconsin.