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THURSDAY MAY 1 2003
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4A • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
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THURSDAY MAY 1.2003
Kristl Henderson
editor
864-4544 or khenderson@kansan.com
Jenna Goepfert and Justin Henning
managing editors
864-4544 or jgoepfert@kansan.com and
hennings@kansan.com
Leah Shaffer
readers' representative
864-4544 or lashaffer@kansan.com
Amanda Sears and Lindsay Hanson
opinion editors
864-4924 or opinion@kansan.com
Eric Ketting
business manager
864-4358 or adsales@kansan.com
Sarah Jantz
retail sales manager
864-4358 or adsales@kansan.com
Malec Gibson
general manager and news adviser
864-7667 or mgibson@kansan.com
Matt Fisher
Matt Fisher
sales and marketing adviser
664.7666 or mfisher@kansan.com
EDITORIAL BOARD
The latest transgression against freedom of speech: Section 215 of the October 2001 USA PATRIOT Act. Section 215 diminishes the burdens placed upon federal officials when seizing personal records, which would include records from bookstores and libraries. The provision lessens the requirement for a seizure by federal officials and, in some cases, it forbids librarians from informing the individual that their records were examined.
Be vigilant to shield rights of library use
The First Amendment doesn't work one way. The freedom to read what you want to read is synonymous with the ability to say what you want to say. When the government can, without probable cause, peer into what exactly someone is reading, the right becomes meaningless.
In response, some libraries and bookstores have reviewed, modified or transformed their account retention policies. For instance, Bear Pond Books of Vermont has announced that they will purge customer information upon request. Libraries in New York, Illinois, California and elsewhere have begun to purge or destroy records at a faster pace than before the act was passed. The University of Kansas retention policy reflects this approach. As The University Daily Kansan reported Tuesday, the libraries remove book rental records from the system when a book is returned, making requests for information about reading records moot. Unfortunately, this approach provides only a work-around, not a solution.
The practical implications of Section 215 in its application to libraries were scarcely debated in October 2001. Now, however, its implications seem clear. It places libraries in a precarious situation by forcing them to undermine either Congress' mandate, or their patrons' privacy.
What is perhaps more troubling is the secrecy surrounding these searches. The USA PATRIOT Act, in some cases, obscures the total number of times it's been used, not to mention times it's been used improperly. The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and the American Civil Liberties Union have seed under the Freedom of Information Act to discover exactly how often the searches are conducted. No decision has yet been reached.
Even with disclosure, the provision has a chilling effect on freedom of speech. Some libraries have posted information about the implications of the USA PATRIOT Act, but others have not for fear of scaring patrons. The meaningful implications of the act seemed to echo most clearly, not within a Congressional record, but within Ari Fleischer's Sept. 26, 2001 press briefing. Fleicher, the articulate component of the Bush administration, told Americans that "they need to watch what they say, watch what they do." He forgot "and what they read."
Greg Hohlwegler for the editorial board
Donovan Atkinson for The University Daily Kansan
Academic journals need freedom
PERSPECTIVE
This column will not tell you how to make a bioweapon. This column will not provide instruction in making germs more deadly or in manufacturing brand new viruses from materials ordered off the Internet.
COMMENTARY
If you are interested in that information, try looking in Anschutz Library or in Dykes Library at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Articles on both those topics were published in journals carried by KU libraries in the past year.
Rachel Robson opinion@kansan.com
While we fret about whether biological weapons will ever be found in Iraq, some of the basic information needed to produce them is easy to find. It's as close as the library or your high-speed Internet connection. Because when scientists do research — about songbirds or quarks or super-deadly strains of anthrax — they publish their results in scientific journals, accessible to all. So ordinary people with copy cards can get their own printouts of reports on why some strains of anthrax are deadlier than others, for instance. And that's a good thing.
Sharing information among researchers is central to the scientific method. When an experiment is published by one set of researchers, it can be repeated by others to verify its results. Such independent replication is one of the key reasons why science has been so successful in increasing our understanding of the world. Additionally, published experimental results inspire the scientists reading them with new ideas for original research. Future projects build on past efforts, but only if research is made available to anyone who is interested. That's equally true of science
regarding songbirds, quarks or deadly bacteria.
But this kind of scientific openness has come under attack since Sept. 11, 2001, and particularly since the anthrax mailings of October 2001. Well-meaning politicians, ignorant of the importance of openness to the scientific method, have pressed for laws banning the publication of "sensitive" research—research that lawmakers think could aid terrorists in producing weapons of mass destruction. Already, the USA PATRIOT Act restricts scientists' access to some materials. And researchers applying for federal grants can now be told, after the grant is approved, that they are forbidden to publish their findings.
Scientific journals also have begun more carefully policing their own content. This February, new international standards for publishing sensitive research were unveiled at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which produces the journal Science.
At this meeting, Ronald Atlas, president of the American Society for Microbiology — which publishes several top microbiology journals — observed that
keeping the knowledge to make bioweapons away from terrorists was not a task that could be accomplished by one nation alone. It also can't be done by lawmakers. Politicians lack the comprehension of science necessary to determine what research would be both useful to terrorists and useless to scientists. Security-obsessed lawmakers are especially deficient in understanding that virtually "any work of value to terrorists will also be of value in countering terrorism," as Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nicholas Cozarelli recently opined.
To paraphrase a National Rifle Association bumper sticker, when data is outlawed, only outlaws will have data. And that's a bad thing, especially if the data regards "sensitive" subjects. Banning the publication of security-sensitive research doesn't prevent terrorists from getting their hands on it, but it does keep law-abiding scientists — the ones we count on to fight terrorism — from having the information they need.
Many KU scientists, myself included conduct research that could be classified as "sensitive" and barred from publication under new laws.
Research not shared with others is pointless and will not be done. We must not allow the hysteria brought about by Sept. 11 to bring to a halt the scientific enlightenment that has created the modern world.
Robson is a Baldwin City graduate student in pathology at the University of Kansas Medical Center
Free for All
Call 864-0500
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
For more comments, go to www.kansan.com
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--the truth that a public political body has every right to "intrude" into public education that it funds through public tax dollars. In fact, it ought to be a relief to the Kansas taxpayer that his or her elected representatives are watching where the tax money goes rather than just shoveling it out and letting it fall where it may.
Hey, Meagan Kelleher, kiss my smoke smelling butt.
I just wanted to say that your Quixart article mentioned nothing about the religious cult behind it.
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This is to our nastiness of a suitmate. Under no circumstances is it acceptable for you to change your pad in your bedroom while someone else is there, or leave a nasty tampon in front of our toilet, exposed for all the world to see. We vote you out of our room.
I'll tell you why sorority girls are obsessed with Lambda Chi. It's because they have an awesome date party that goes to the Ozarks and because they win intramural softball on Sunday night.
I'd get down with some Pyramid Pizza before I got down with Paul Kopecky's pyramid scheme.
the truth that a public political body has every right to "intrude" into public education that it funds through public tax dollars. In fact, it ought to be a relief to the Kansas taxpayer that his or her elected representatives are watching where the tax money goes rather than just shoveling it out and letting it fall where it may.
the truth that a public political body has every right to "intrude" into public education that it funds through public tax dollars. In fact, it ought to be a relief to the Kansas taxpayer that his or her elected representatives are watching where the tax money goes rather than just shoveling it out and letting it fall where it may.
Give me the definition of residual income right now, Kopecky. Right now.
If this is supposed to be the prime of my life, why am I sitting here cleaning moldy coffee out of my Nalgene with a butter knife?
the truth that a public political body has every right to "intrude" into public education that it funds through public tax dollars. In fact, it ought to be a relief to the Kansas taxpayer that his or her elected representatives are watching where the tax money goes rather than just shoveling it out and letting it fall where it may.
Hey Kopecky, you're obviously not a math major. $6,000 a month? That's a hell of a long way from retiring from college with a million bucks.
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Paul Kopecky, you're a foot.
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Bill O'Reilly is the biggest moron I've ever seen. First of all, it's not UK, it's KU. Second of all, the governor of Kansas isn't a man, she's a woman, and she was really damn smart to veto that stupid amendment.
I'm engaged! I love you, Kevin.
The girl from KU on The O'Reilly Factor just accused Dennis Dailey of going to Porn Night at the dorms. I was just wondering when and where Porn Night is?
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Don't bars and restaurants have the right to allow people to smoke or not smoke in their establishments?
Are there any guys on this campus who can two-step?
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I just saw a chalkboard in Hash that says "Support Dailey Sex." That's politics I can get into.
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PERSPECTIVE
Attack on Dailey not in name of censorship
Ah, censorship. More accurately, "censorship." The c-word is the magic bullet in any debate about issues concerning public funding of communication. It doesn't matter what communication you advocate or the context in question; just drop the c-bomb and you win. After all, what real American could be in favor of "censorship"?
COMMENTARY
Joe Pull
opnion@kansan.com
The problem is that half the time the c-bomb is used, it is used in reference to something that isn't censorship at all. Case in point: the recent hoopla over an attempt in the Kansas Legislature to withhold funding from the KU School of Social Welfare because of the explicit nature of Dennis Dailey's "Human Sexuality in Everyday Life" class. Apparently, if the Legislature wants to have a say in how the money it appropriates is spent, it is plunging into tyranny.
Defenders of Dailey have been quick to argue that this controversy is about academic freedom and the wrongful intrusion of a political body into the realm of education. What they ignore is
When the University was going through the process of raising tuition last year, many people screamed that the University was a state institution and that it was the responsibility of the state
to fund it. Now, however, that argument has been conveniently forgotten. University officials, it seems, want to receive state funding but be completely free of any state oversight of how those funds are spent.
I'm sorry, but life doesn't work that way.
When you take money from people you recognize they can request that you spend the money in a certain way. If you spend it in ways they don't approve of, they have every right to withhold that funding in the future. That is exactly the case with a human sexuality class at a state university.
There is fundamental difference between banning speech (censorship) and choosing not to fund speech. The human sexuality class issue falls into the latter category. This issue is simply a matter of the Legislature exerting its right not to fund things of which it doesn't approve. The Legislature is perfectly justified in doing so because there is no obligation for the state to provide funding for
anything. Whether the recipient in question is a university is irrelevant.
If the people of Kansas want to fund the class in the way they always have, they have that right. However, if they choose to withdraw that funding, they also have that right. The Legislature would choose to withhold funding of the department of biology if it taught racial supremacy. Would anyone complain then? Would there be howls about academic freedom? Is the Legislature justified in withholding funding for some issues but not others?
Any institution that is state funded will be subject to the political mood of the people making up the state. This is a simple fact of democracy. The human sexuality class issue has no relevance to questions of censorship. Rather, it is a question of democracy, and the use of the e-bomb to argue that only obscures the reality of the matter.
Pull is a Colfax, N.D., senior in history and political science.
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