BY HANK REICHMAN Advocates of academic freedom generally find freedom of information laws beneficial. Such laws enhance public knowledge and debate on the workings of government agencies, including public universities. But as a 2013 amicus brief filed by the AAUP and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) pointed out, “in evaluating disclosure under FOIA, the public’s right to know…
Sometime between October 15-18, the office of Dr. Angelina Godoy, Director of the University of Washington (UW) Center for Human Rights, was broken into and her desktop computer and a hard drive containing sensitive information about a recent lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency were stolen. Godoy reported that the hard drive contained “about 90…
Walter Olson at Overlawyered (and reprinted at Minding the Campus) argues that the AAUP is hypocritical and left-wing in its approach to Freedom of Information Act requests. However, the evidence he offers simply doesn’t show this. According to Olson, in the case of Douglas Laycock, “the AAUP was quoted in the press talking in a…