From declanm@netcom.com Mon Jul 17 08:46:48 1995 Return-Path: Received: from andrew.cmu.edu by mail4.netcom.com (8.6.12/Netcom) id IAA24926; Mon, 17 Jul 1995 08:00:47 -0700 Received: (from postman@localhost) by andrew.cmu.edu (8.6.12/8.6.12) id LAA04554; Mon, 17 Jul 1995 11:00:38 -0400 Received: via switchmail; Mon, 17 Jul 1995 11:00:37 -0400 (EDT) Received: from unix19.andrew.cmu.edu via qmail ID ; Mon, 17 Jul 1995 11:00:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from unix19.andrew.cmu.edu via qmail ID ; Mon, 17 Jul 1995 11:00:28 -0400 (EDT) Received: from mms.4.60.Jan.26.1995.18.43.47.sun4c.411.EzMail.2.0.CUILIB.3.45.SNAP.NOT.LINKED.unix19.andrew.cmu.edu.sun4c.411 via MS.5.6.unix19.andrew.cmu.edu.sun4c_411; Mon, 17 Jul 1995 11:00:27 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 11:00:27 -0400 (EDT) From: "Declan B. McCullagh" To: Fight Censorship Mailing List Subject: Request for Explanation from CMU Provost Cc: Erik.Altmann@cs.cmu.edu References: Status: RO X-Status: The attached letter, from a graduate student in the school of computer science to the provost, Paul Christiano, seems representative of the campus community's digust with CMU administrators. -Declan ---------- Forwarded message begins here ---------- X-Added: With Flames (bblib $Revision: 1.4 $) Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 0;andrew.cmu.edu;Network-Mail Received: from po3.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for bb+graffiti.bboard-censorship@andrew.cmu.edu ID ; Mon, 17 Jul 1995 00:07:33 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Received: from ALECTRO.SOAR.CS.CMU.EDU (ALECTRO.SOAR.CS.CMU.EDU [128.2.194.41]) by po3.andrew.cmu.edu (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id AAA19422; Mon, 17 Jul 1995 00:07:23 -0400 From: Erik Altmann Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 00:06:43 EDT To: Paul.Christiano@andrew.cmu.edu Subject: Request for an explanation CC: ped@panix.com, bb+graffiti.bboard-censorship@andrew.cmu.edu Sender: altmann@ALECTRO.SOAR.CS.CMU.EDU Dear Provost Christiano, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (July 16, p A11) reports that last Friday, under pressure from CMU faculty, you appointed an ethics panel to investigate allegations against Martin Rimm. Apparently you believe that there might have been breaches of ethics, if not violations of CMU's disciplinary code, in the process by which Rimm gathered the data for his report on Internet pornography. And yet you apparently reviewed Rimm's results long before they were made public. You, along with Dr Arms, Dr Steinberg, and Dr Mehrabian, proferred the data collected by Rimm as justification for censoring bboards at CMU. CMU has requirements for consent by human subjects. I believe I deserve an explanation of your apparent unwillingness to protect me, as a member of the CMU community, against exploitation by unethical researchers. I believe your explanation should address other questions as well. When you first became aware of the Rimm report, did you wilfully ignore what now to appear to be its ethical transgressions? If so, did you ignore the ethical questions because the report served other goals, and what were those goals? If not, why should we trust you to oversee all academic activity at this University? Why have you not publically dissociated the University from a flawed, discredited, and sensationalized report that is now nationally known as "The CMU Study"? In a meeting with University employees, you apparently implied a threat to the job security of a faculty member if he excerised his academic freedom by privately redistributing material you have ordered censored. Did you imply this kind of threat to a faculty member at CMU? More generally, what overall goals for CMU have directed your actions, beginning with your initial support of censorship last fall, to your sponsorship of the Rimm report, to your decision now to retreat to another committee to study issues raised by this report? Your goals are difficult to understand, because they seem inconsistent with the professional requirements of your office to promote academic freedom and integrity and excellence in research. Why are you, as provost at a university, promoting censorship of sexual imagery, when this censorship has been demonstrated to be legally unnecessary? What personal moral perspective, if any, did you bring to your decisions concerning sexual imagery on the Internet? Your actions have had a significant effect on academic freedom at CMU and on CMU's reputation as a university. Your actions may also affect freedom of expression in Internet-related communities in the future, given that Internet policy is nascent. As a researcher from Carnegie Mellon who will continue to be associated with the Internet, I believe that I am justified in asking for an account of your actions. I look forward to your response. Sincerely, Erik Altmann Graduate Student Computer Science