From Slate:
“Last week the University of Virginia decided to fight a sweeping subpoena served upon the institution in late April. State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli subpoenaed documents in connection with five grants awarded to Michael Mann—a former UVA climate-change scientist who now teaches at Penn State. Cuccinelli is using a state fraud statute to demand thousands of e-mails between Mann and climate-change scientists around the world. The request was both broad and unprecedented. So the university filed a petition to quash the subpoena on various grounds. Academics across the country have raised alarms, signing petitions and urging Cuccinelli to back off, claiming that this novel use of prosecutorial power to investigate climate science in the academy constitutes a threat to free inquiry… These letters and petitions often invoke the First Amendment and quote the U.S. Supreme Court to assert that the Constitution protects “academic freedom.”
Does it? What precisely is “academic freedom,” and why would the Constitution protect it? Who can assert “academic freedom”—individual faculty members or the university as a whole? What is the scope of the right, and does it apply to faculty at state universities or those who receive government grants? The Supreme Court has never really answered these questions. UVA v. Cuccinelli would be a good time to do so—if the case ever gets that far.”
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