Computers and Academic Freedom Mailing List

Purpose: To discuss questions such as: How should general principles
of academic freedom (such as freedom of expression, freedom to read,
due process, and privacy) be applied to university computers and
networks? How are these principles actually being applied? How can the
principles of academic freedom as applied to computers and networks be
defended?

Mitch Kapor of the Electronic Frontier Foundation has given the
discussion a home on the eff.org machine. As of Sept, 1991, the list
has 375 members in at least five countries. Thousands more read the
list via newsgroups alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk and
alt.comp.acad-freedom.news.

There are four versions of the mailing list.

comp-academic-freedom-talk  
 	- you'll received dozens of e-mail notes every day.
comp-academic-freedom-batch 
	- about once a day, you'll receive a compilation of the day's notes.
comp-academic-freedom-news
        - about once a week you'll receive a compilation of the best
          notes of the week.
comp-academic-freeedom-abstracts
        - about one a week you'll receive the abstract of the current
          comp-academic-freedom-news (CAF-news). You'll also receive
          instructions on how to access the current CAF-news.

To join a version of the list, send mail to listserv@eff.org. Include
the line "add ". (Other commands are "delete
" and "help"). If you have problems, send email to
caf-requests@eff.org.

In any case, after you join the list you can send e-mail to the list
by addressing it to caf-talk@eff.org.

Alternatively, if you may be able to read the mailing lists as newsgroups.
Look for alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk and alt.comp.acad-freedom.news.

An abstract and archive of comp-academic-freedom-news is available via
anonymous ftp from ftp.eff.org. See file "pub/academic/abstracts" and
"pub/academic/README". These files are also available via email (Send
email to archive-server@eff.org. Include the lines "help" and
"index".)


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The long version:
When my grandmother attended the University of Illinois fifty-five
years ago, academic freedom meant the right to speak up in class, to
created student organizations, to listen to controversial speakers, to
read "dangerous" books in the library, and to be protected from random
searches of your dorm room.

Today these rights are guaranteed by most universities. These days,
however, my academic life very different from my grandmother's. Her
academic life was centered on the classroom and the student union.
Mine centers on the computer and the computer network. In the new
academia, my academic freedom is much less secure.

It is time for a discussion of computers and academic freedom.  I've
been in contact with Mitch Kapor. He has given the discussion a home on
the eff.org machine.

The suppression of academic freedom on computers is common. At least
once a month, someone posts on plea on Usenet for help. The most
common complaint is that a newsgroup has been banned because of its
content (usually alt.sex). In January, 1991, a sysadmin at the
University of Wisconsin didn't ban any newsgroups directly. Instead,
he reduced the newsgroup expiration time so that reading groups such
as alt.sex is almost impossible. In April, 1991, a sysadmin at Case
Western reported that he had removed a note that a student had posted
to a local newsgroup.  The sysadmin said the information in the note
could be misused. In other cases, university employees may be reading
e-mail or looking through user files. This may happen with or without
some prior notice that e-mail and files are fair game.

In many of these cases the legality of the suppression is unclear. It
may depend on user expectation, prior announcements, and whether the
university is public or private.

The legality is, however, irrelevant. The duty of the University is
not to suppress everything it legally can; rather it is to support the
free and open investigation and expression of ideas. This is the ideal
of academic freedom. In this role, the University acts a model of how
the wider world should be. (In the world of computers, universities are
perhaps the most important model of how things should be).

If you are interested in discussing this issues, or if you have
first-hand experience with academic surpression on computers or
networks, please join the mailing list.

 - Carl Kadie