Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!lfcs!jha
From: jha@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Jamie Andrews)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: USENET site admin responsibilities (academic freedom)
Message-ID: <346@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 8 Sep 89 09:45:15 GMT
References: <3659@uwovax.uwo.ca> <13316@nsc.nsc.com> <3988@buengc.BU.EDU> <1989Sep3.043558.9447@xenitec.uucp> <4030@buengc.BU.EDU> <2860@splut.conmicro.com> <880@sumax.UUCP>
Sender: root@castle.ed.ac.uk
Reply-To: jha@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Jamie Andrews)
Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U
Lines: 40

In article <880@sumax.UUCP> spector%sumax.UUCP@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Mitchell Spector) writes:
>....  Traditionally, universities have regarded freedom of
>expression as fundamental to their nature.  They generally do not censor
>books in their libraries, even though they legally could, simply because
>they regard censorship as contrary to their function and philosophy.
>Clearly, academic freedom should apply to electronic communication just as
>it applies to communication by print and by speech.

     Well... let me make an analogy.  Say some new guy comes to
the Computer Science Department here who is a very competent
researcher and teacher but is obnoxious in meetings.  He turns
up in committee meetings and insults everyone, he delays
department meetings with his endless arguing, he goes to faculty
meetings and generally embarrasses the department.  We have
every right to talk to him to get him to change his style, and
to do everything up to banning him from meetings, and even
firing him, to deal with the problem.  This is not an absolute
``curtailment of academic freedom'', it's the exclusion of
someone who is uncooperative to the point of making the running
of the department difficult, *including* its work in more widely
protecting academic freedom.

     No one should be arguing that person X should be excluded
from sci.logic because he/she is a Platonist (say).  If he/she
is obnoxious in constantly injecting arguments for Platonism
into every debate, I would say there are more valid reasons for
taking steps.  If he/she is, say, constantly and obnoxiously
arguing that All Women Should be Raped in soc.women...
I missed the discussion that led to this, so I don't know
what the original case was all about, but you see the general
principle I'm arguing for.

     In summary, there is more than one way to curtail
academic freedom (like being obnoxious to the point of making
net communication difficult), and more than one way to protect
it (like restricting net access in such cases).

--Jamie.
  jha@lfcs.ed.ac.uk
"Walls so thin I can almost hear them breathing"