Twelve organizations sent a letter to University President Teresa A. Sullivan Thursday, urging her to be wary of a Freedom of Information Act request made Jan. 6 by the American Tradition Institute's Environmental Law Center and Del. Robert Marshall, R-Manassas.
The FOIA request seeks emails, grant applications and handwritten notes related to climate scientist Michael Mann's work and research on global warming he conducted during his time as a faculty member of the environmental sciences department in the College from 1999 to 2005.
In November 2009, a computer at the University of East Anglia Hadley Climatic Research Unit was hacked illegally, publicly exposing emails and files of scientists, one of which was Mann. Climate change skeptics "used portions of the illegally obtained material as evidence of alleged scientific fraud," according to a summary of the case on the University website. Numerous independent investigations have cleared Mann's name of any scientific wrongdoing.
The controversy surrounding the current situation arose because the request closely resembles a civil investigative demand issued last year by Virginia Attorney General and University alumnus Ken Cuccinelli. The demand ultimately was denied when the University took the case to the Albemarle County Circuit Court for fear that the CID was an "attack on academic freedom," according to a press release issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a signatory of the recent letter. Cuccinelli has appealed the case to the Virginia Supreme Court.
In the letter, the organizations urge the University to balance "the interests in public disclosure against the public interest in academic freedom" by citing a statement made by Chancellor Biddy Martin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where a similar FOIA request was made. In her statement, Martin said faculty members "must be able to assume a right to the privacy of [email] exchanges, barring violations of state law or university policy." Not doing so would "[put] academic freedom in peril and threatens the processes by which knowledge is created," Martin said in the letter.
Chris Horner, senior director of litigation for ATI, identified a problem with the letter, however, stating in an email that "if academic freedom existed as an exemption in the statute [the FOIA], it would be a legitimate exception; not existing in the statute, it is not."
The letter was signed by the American Association of University Professors, the Alliance for Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, the Center for Inquiry, Climate Science Watch, the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the National Council for Science and the Environment, the Ornithological Council, People for the American Way, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Bob O'Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.
"The purpose of this letter was to express the strong concerns ... and the hope that the FOIA request would be essentially treated in the same way that the [earlier CID] issue had been resolved," O'Neil said, referring to the decision made by the court in the case brought by Cuccinelli.
Horner said the purpose of FOIA requests is "transparency", and that the requested records "belong to the taxpayer" because they were "created in full knowledge that their release to the taxpayer is a condition of relying upon funding from the taxpayer."
"When accepting a position as a public employee he accepted this sort of scrutiny," Horner said. "The calls for retroactive exemption are unserious."
Because of activities surrounding Sullivan's inauguration Friday, the University has not yet fully reviewed the letter, University spokesperson Carol Wood said. "As always, any University response to a FOIA will conform with Virginia law, which may differ from freedom of information laws in other states, Wood said. "The University carefully considers all available exemptions and all federal and state laws precluding disclosure and also does not discuss its responses publicly before providing them to the requester."
O'Neil noted that it was "pure coincidence" that the letter was sent the day before Sullivan's inauguration.
"To date, no emails of Mann ... have been provided under the Freedom of Information Act," according to the summary of the case on the University website.
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