U of Minnesota General Counsel Responds to Criticism of His Role in Defending Academic Freedom

Here.  (Our earlier coverage here and here.)  The full list of questions the GC submitted to the Faculty Senate--at the request of the Faculty Senate--makes clear that the academic freedom of bioethicist Carl Elliott was not the central focus.  The crucial bit of the new article:

[The General Counsel's] efforts have been intended to vindicate faculty members who conduct controversial research, not squelch discussion, he added. "The faculty, as a collective body, should take an interest in attacks on their members that serve to deter or chill controversial research,” Rotenberg told The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The clinical trial that resulted in the death of a patient was not simply "controversial" research, however; it was, on Professor Elliott's accounting, not real research at all, but instead part of the business activities of a pharmaceutical company in which the "researchers" had a financial stake.   Presumably the clinical researchers in question deny that, and they too have a claim to academic freedom at the university.

In another response Rotenberg wrote: “Consistent with our University’s tradition of encouraging a wide diversity of viewpoints and perspectives, we support Dr. Elliott in raising some important issues.

“The protection of the rights of individuals who participate in clinical research is fundamental to the clinical research enterprise. …We take seriously the concerns raised by Prof. Elliott, and value an academic environment in which he and others of our colleagues can raise issues critically, and, we hope, constructively.”

Rotenberg argued that the issue before the senate was an exploration of how the academy deals with internal disputes. Punishing faculty was never part of the discussion. “That’s just not what the senate does,” he said.

In an e-mail to CorpCounsel.com, Engstrand said that Rotenberg’s question was not interpreted by either the executive committee of the faculty senate or the AF&T as raising any academic freedom question.

“The question did not suggest to faculty leaders that he or the administration was seeking to discipline or otherwise restrain professor Elliott from exercising his legal and academic rights to criticize other faculty research,” he wrote, “or that the senate should be involved in doing so.”

It's good that the GC and the Faculty Senate are now both on record on this score.