Subject: Request for Explanation from CMU Provost

From: "Declan B. McCullagh" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 11:00:27 -0400 (EDT)

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

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From: Erik Altmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 00:06:43 EDT
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Request for an explanation
CC: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Sender: [email-masked]

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