[PEN-L:1553] Re: Jim Craven, email, academic freedom, etc

[Bill Rosenberg <w.rosenberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The issues regarding use of email are important ones. I have been
involved in developing a "Code of Practice" for email use here.
Important considerations include

- the fine line between personal use and work use in an academic
environment
- the genuine need to have some controls over personal and illegal
use
- the counterbalancing need to protect academic freedom, and
general freedom of speech
- the need to distinguish between the means (email) and the content:
withdrawing email rights as means to control the content is about
as sensible as taking away the person's pen (except as an interim
measure, or if the offense was related to email itself).
- the limits on the rights of the University to search people's
email.

It seems to me that Clark College has taken the wrong road on all of
those.

Regarding academic freedom, our union, the Association of
University Staff, which covers most university staff (academic and
general) in New Zealand, is taking it up as an issue because of the
pressure on it in recent years. While it has statutory protection,
managerialism and commercialisation put it under severe pressure from
inside, while ad hominem attacks on academics who oppose economic
orthodoxy come continually from outside. We had Noam Chomsky present
an inaugural Academic Freedom Award recently (to academic medicos
who exposed the deaths of several people due to the incompetent
management and cost-cutting in our "reformed" health system). Other
approaches being considered include forcing administrations to
positively encourage the exercise of academic freedom alongside
research, teaching and administration.

Bill Rosenberg