The Chicago Tribune had a recent article entitled “Chicago State sends 2nd salvo at faculty website“. The article mentions “Chicago State University has demanded that a group of faculty members remove a photograph and change the domain name of a website that criticizes university administrators, the second time the school has sent a letter to the blog’s owners. In a Jan. 3 letter to an attorney representing the site’s operators, Donald Levine, an attorney with Gonzalez, Saggio and Harlan, said the csufacultyvoice.blogspot.com/ address is not authorized or endorsed by CSU or its entire faculty.”
In response to the University’s request, the faculty bloggers, in a post entitled “More of the same???“, the blogger(s) assert:
“So loyal readers, the regime continues in its feeble attempts to silence your humble narrator and colleagues. I am truly humbled that our attempts at shining the light on administrative misdeeds has driven a university with continuously declining enrollment to pay a law firm to infringe on our First Amendment rights. (See this Chicago Tribune article) I am sure that you, loyal readers, won’t stand for this blatant attempt at censorship, especially when administrative misconduct is at the center of this controversy. I am sure you remember falsified employment applications and the inaction taken by this administration. I am sure that you recall the failed attempts at censorship in the computer usage policy and the communications policy. This administration just doesn’t get it. The misdeeds you engage in will be brought into the light of day. And since no affirmative defense has ever been offered, I can only conclude what appears on this blog is true. The sycophantic responses by anonymous readers, usually few and far between, never offer any argument in defense of the abysmal performance of this administration. Those comments always seem to degenerate into ad hominem attacks on the authors and no discussion of the substance of the post.