Chicago State University Lawyers Attack Faculty Bloggers 94
An anonymous reader writes "A blog run by faculty members at Chicago State University (CSU) has been threatened by university lawyers with a cease and desist notice. Since 2009 the blog has posted information critical of CSU's policies and hiring practices. The notice threatened legal action if the site is not disabled by Friday due to violations of 'trade names and marks' without permission and violations of University policies. The blog admin changed the name of the blog in the meanwhile to Crony State University and replaced an image on the page pending legal counsel. Also the blog is currently still active."
Double standards? (Score:3, Interesting)
Do Chicago State University lawyers also send cease ad desist letters to faculty bloggers that are supportive of its policies and hiring practices? Or do they apply the government standard of never prosecuting leaks that makes the government looks good even if they damage national security?
only in academia (Score:4, Interesting)
Only in academia would faculty feel entitled to freely criticize their employer while expecting their employer to turn a blind eye. In any other field you would be canned on the spot for doing something like this. Possibly government employees in some departments would have similar attitudes?
Now you can argue that academia has it right and the rest of society has it wrong or you could call the faculty self entitled tenured representations of antiquity. Having worked in the private industry as well as some years in a very large University one could argue this either way.
Re:Attacked? (Score:3, Interesting)
I looked at the blog and all I saw was a bunch of petty complaints. Things that may technically be true, but are not anywhere near the horrendous scandal that the blog's author tries to claim.
For example, a couple of university press releases and documents from university board of trustees meetings refer to a person as "Dr. Henderson" 6 weeks before she officially received her PhD. Oh the horror!! And her resume fails to list the 4 months that she was demoted from Dean of Instruction to ordinary teaching faculty -- 11 years ago.
Seriously, these people need to get a hobby or something.
Re:only in academia (Score:5, Interesting)
Only in academia would faculty feel entitled to freely criticize their employer while expecting their employer to turn a blind eye. In any other field you would be canned on the spot for doing something like this.
There are principles at play here that don't exist in other employment situations; for instance, academic employees have this thing called "academic freedom" [aaup.org] which, for decades, has meant that "[c]ollege and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline..." and that "a faculty member’s expression of opinion as a citizen cannot constitute grounds for dismissal unless it clearly demonstrates the faculty member’s unfitness for his or her position. Extramural utterances rarely bear upon the faculty member’s fitness for the position."