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Minnesota Public Radio
May 4 2012
Court rules in favor of U of M's academic freedom claim
by Steven John, Minnesota Public Radio
May 4, 2012
ST. PAUL, Minn. - The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday
that a University of Minnesota academic department had the right to
list the Turkish Council of America's website as a source of
unreliable information on the Armenian Genocide of the early 20th
Century.
The council had sued the university, alleging that the university
defamed the organization and violated its right to free speech. The
stand of the Turkish council mirrors the official government line of
Turkey, denying that the systematic killings of hundreds of thousands
of ethnic Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during and after World War I
constituted genocide.
University of Minnesota General Counsel Mark Rotenberg spoke about the
court's decision with Steven John of All Things Considered on Friday.
An edited transcript of that discussion is below.
Mark Rotenberg: Yesterday's court ruling simply upheld the opportunity
and the right of our faculty at the U of M to offer an opinion about
the historical events involving the death of many hundreds of
thousands of Armenians prior to and during World War One. Our faculty
offered those opinions on a website in our Department of Holocaust and
Genocide Studies within the College of Liberal Arts.
Steven John: I'm sure a lot of universities across the county have
been watching this case. What do you think will be the ultimate
result?
Rotenberg: We know that a lot of universities have been following
this, many publications have reported on this, including international
publications in Europe where the issue of the Armenian genocide is
front and center in many people's minds.
When you have a ruling at this level from a federal appeals court,
that enhances and affirms academic freedom for the faculty of the
university to express its viewpoints online. You enhance the quality
of debate and you enlarge the opportunities for students and the
public to know what our faculty thinks, and I think that's all to the
good.
John: It appears that the University Center for Holocaust and Genocide
Studies has taken the list down from its website, why did that happen?
Rotenberg: The director of the center eventually chose to take the
list of unreliable sources down because he decided he did not want to
give more publicity to the unreliable sources. He did not take it down
for any legal reason, there's no court order, the lawyers here for the
university didn't advise him to take it down. I know he just felt that
he didn't want to give any more publicity to the sources that the
center found to be unreliable.
John: Do you think this is a problem that's grown out from the
proliferation of information available in the age of the Internet?
Rotenberg: I think it's partly that. This case probably wouldn't have
even come to court if it had just been a faculty member in a classroom
in front of 20 students saying she thought this book was shoddy
scholarship, or that [a] monograph or article was not credible.
Faculty members do that all the time. They've been doing that since
Plato and Socrates taught in Greece thousands of years ago.
I think the difference, as your question points out, is that nowadays
when faculty offer their critique of some other viewpoint, it goes to
entire world potentially. And some people, like the Turkish coalition
here, took some offense at that.
Interview transcribed and edited by Jon Collins, MPR reporter.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/05/04/qa-rotenberg/
From: A. Papazian
May 4 2012
Court rules in favor of U of M's academic freedom claim
by Steven John, Minnesota Public Radio
May 4, 2012
ST. PAUL, Minn. - The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday
that a University of Minnesota academic department had the right to
list the Turkish Council of America's website as a source of
unreliable information on the Armenian Genocide of the early 20th
Century.
The council had sued the university, alleging that the university
defamed the organization and violated its right to free speech. The
stand of the Turkish council mirrors the official government line of
Turkey, denying that the systematic killings of hundreds of thousands
of ethnic Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during and after World War I
constituted genocide.
University of Minnesota General Counsel Mark Rotenberg spoke about the
court's decision with Steven John of All Things Considered on Friday.
An edited transcript of that discussion is below.
Mark Rotenberg: Yesterday's court ruling simply upheld the opportunity
and the right of our faculty at the U of M to offer an opinion about
the historical events involving the death of many hundreds of
thousands of Armenians prior to and during World War One. Our faculty
offered those opinions on a website in our Department of Holocaust and
Genocide Studies within the College of Liberal Arts.
Steven John: I'm sure a lot of universities across the county have
been watching this case. What do you think will be the ultimate
result?
Rotenberg: We know that a lot of universities have been following
this, many publications have reported on this, including international
publications in Europe where the issue of the Armenian genocide is
front and center in many people's minds.
When you have a ruling at this level from a federal appeals court,
that enhances and affirms academic freedom for the faculty of the
university to express its viewpoints online. You enhance the quality
of debate and you enlarge the opportunities for students and the
public to know what our faculty thinks, and I think that's all to the
good.
John: It appears that the University Center for Holocaust and Genocide
Studies has taken the list down from its website, why did that happen?
Rotenberg: The director of the center eventually chose to take the
list of unreliable sources down because he decided he did not want to
give more publicity to the unreliable sources. He did not take it down
for any legal reason, there's no court order, the lawyers here for the
university didn't advise him to take it down. I know he just felt that
he didn't want to give any more publicity to the sources that the
center found to be unreliable.
John: Do you think this is a problem that's grown out from the
proliferation of information available in the age of the Internet?
Rotenberg: I think it's partly that. This case probably wouldn't have
even come to court if it had just been a faculty member in a classroom
in front of 20 students saying she thought this book was shoddy
scholarship, or that [a] monograph or article was not credible.
Faculty members do that all the time. They've been doing that since
Plato and Socrates taught in Greece thousands of years ago.
I think the difference, as your question points out, is that nowadays
when faculty offer their critique of some other viewpoint, it goes to
entire world potentially. And some people, like the Turkish coalition
here, took some offense at that.
Interview transcribed and edited by Jon Collins, MPR reporter.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/05/04/qa-rotenberg/
From: A. Papazian