Can a government-supported institution of higher learning claim First Amendment protection for speech it deliberately conceals from the public? That key question will be decided by retired Arlington Judge Paul Sheridan, now presiding over a precedent-setting case in Prince William Circuit Court involving the University of Virginia’s continued refusal to hand over 12,000 emails by former UVA climatologist Michael Mann requested three years ago by Del. Bob Marshall, R-Manassas, under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act.
No, says David Schnare, director of the Charlottesville-based American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center, who maintains that UVA is really seeking “a right to secret speech” because “the First Amendment only applies to speech intended to reach, or actually made in, a public forum.”
Mann became a central figure in the Climategate scandal when hackers discovered emails from him purportedly attempting to “hide the decline” in global temperatures to make the case for man-made global warming, and urging other researchers to hide or destroy records. A subsequent inquiry by Penn State University, Mann’s employer after he left UVA, exonerated him of any wrongdoing — a fact repeatedly invoked by UVA as a reason not to release the emails.
ATI counters that the inquiry panel conducted a deliberate whitewash to protect Penn State’s academic reputation. “Documents exist in which a principal in PSU’s effort acknowledges it was orchestrated from behind the scenes to avoid certain people being asked certain things, presumably because that would make the desired outcome [exoneration] impossible,” according to a court memorandum filed Thursday.
Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre also made reference to a coverup in a November blog post, when he said he was never questioned by Penn State, even though he had been the first critic to spot the fatal error in Mann’s “hockey stick” graph. An “inside source … agreed that the Inquiry Committee didn’t do their job … [and] pointed to a reason that I had not contemplated: that despite [former Chairman William Easterling’s] supposed ‘recusal,’ Easterling continued to exert influence on the Inquiry Committee …” he wrote.
ATI attorney Chris Horner, whose upcoming book, “The Liberal War on Transparency,” exposes the sham of academic “self-policing,” notes that Mann is a former public servant “who agreed to transparency and accountability as conditions of living off the taxpayer.” Virginia taxpayers still have the right to know how their money is spent.
