The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) doesn’t want its unpublished climate change research seen by the public. The association is trying to block requests from a conservative think tank that wants to see what kind of research is being withheld from publication.
The College Fix reports that the AAUP has filed a brief with the Arizona Court of Appeals to stop the research efforts of the Energy & Environment Legal Institute from obtaining the data. The association suggested in a Friday news release that even though if a professor’s research his been conducted at a pubic university, it should not be available for the public to examine.
The association goes so far as describing the request for the research information as “harassment” because it “targeted” the professors engaged in that research. And they say it’s all about maintaining “a free and vital university system, which depends on the protection of academic freedom to engage in the free and open scientific debate necessary to create high quality academic research.”
Divulging the information “would have a severe chilling effect on intellectual debate among researchers and scientists,” the association says.
The story began in 2011 when the American Tradition Institute, as the conservative think-tank was then known, requested, through the Freedom of Information Act, a series of unpublished documents on climate change from the University of Arizona.
“The public are increasingly aware that they have funded the effort to impose an all-pain, no-gain energy-scarcity agenda on them, from activists in federal bureaucracies and the green pressure groups they love, down to activists ensconced in state universities,” he wrote in 2013.
Horner said it just makes sense for the University of Arizona to surrender the research data if they have nothing to hide and because taxpayer’s funded the work.
But the university hasn’t budged on its position that unpublished research should be exempt from freedom of information requests.
“The University of Arizona supports the public’s right to know how we do business and to the documents that support those activities. We receive and fulfill numerous public records requests on a weekly basis,” spokesman Chris Sigurdson told The College Fix in an email.