Many readers have sent this story. Readers at public universities take note: the right-wing zealots have now identified this as a new tactic for intimidating and harassing academic critics of the plutocracy. The class war being waged against unionized workers is now branching out to their supporters. Although it remains to be seen how the courts will rule on the validity of such fishing expeditions into faculty e-mails, do not count on "academic freedom" as a defense: its constitutional status in the U.S. has been in serious doubt for quite some time. Because the Michigan request targets scholars who work on labor issues, their academic freedom defense may fare better. Quite apart from academic freedom issues, all these faculty have First Amendment free speech rights, and there will also be questions about whether the e-mails in question are really part of the "government functions" of the faculty as opposed to their private, and constitutionally protected, speech.
ADDENDUM: Just to be clear, these FOIA requests can reach, in principle, only e-mail on your university e-mail account, and only faculty, staff and other university employees are at risk (student e-mail will generally be protected by federal student privacy laws, though I'm not absolutely certain about the scope of that protection).
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