My initial letter to Steinberg and Mehrabian

187 Arsenal St
Watertown, MA 02172
February 27, 1995

Dr. Robert Mehrabian
President
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890

Dear President Mehrabian:

I am sorry to inform you that none of my children will be attending CMU in any capacity, whether as graduate students or undergraduates, due to CMU's ill-advised and inappropriate curtailment of intellectual freedom of expression: The decision of the CMU administration in November to unilaterally attempt to deny access to certain parts of the Internet to its entire community. Fortunately, as none of my children are yet enrolled at CMU, this decision has come early enough to avoid disrupting their education.

Not attending CMU because of this event is both a matter of principle (e.g., why should anyone help support CMU's grand step backwards into censorship and intellectual timidity?), but of pragmatism as well, as follows.

Someone in the position to expect admission to CMU is also in a position to expect admission to any one of a number of equally outstanding institutions, such as MIT, Stanford, Caltech, the Ivy's, and so forth. Why would someone in this position willingly subject themselves to an environment in which basic access to free speech is deliberately inhibited by the university's administration? Further, given the extremely tenous nature of the potential threat posed by the speech in the "banned" newsgroups, this bodes badly for an education at CMU in general---what other sources of knowledge will soon be deemed "inappropriate" for those at CMU? Why should anyone take chances that their education will be impaired by such poor decisions of the administration? Better to simply go elsewhere.

It is highly unfortunate that a university which prides itself as being "The Professional Choice" should act so unprofessionally. As the letter of November 8, 1994, to you from Steinhardt, Heins, and Walczak of the ACLU asserts, it appears that you:

Did not consult your own counsel,
Did not realize that Pennsylvania law is quite stringent about what would have to be true for you to be liable at all,
Did not realize that, as a university, you had a special exemption anyway,
Did not realize that it is well established that obscenity policies cannot reduce everything to the level of what is suitable for children, and,
Have no evidence that anyone feels like bringing litigation in the first place.

When I first heard news of this ill-considered policy, I and others hesitated in making any firm decisions. It seemed ludicrous that the university actually expected to continue with such a policy, nor did it seem reasonable, given the nature of network technology, that it could be enforced. Even the faculty condemned the decision, in a resolution passed November 10, 1994 by CMU Faculty Senate. It seemed likely that the university administration would admit that it had made a gauche and hastily-considered decision, and that it would simply let the matter drop. It did not.

Reinstatement of the affected text-based newsgroups, but not of those carrying binary images, does nothing to ameliorate the message that CMU is sending, but only to reinforce the notion that CMU's administration has no principled focus in the issue at all---after all, if the text is not censorable, why are the images? If the images are censorable, why not the text? It seems that CMU is attempting to have it both ways, and to wriggle around the issues involved, which are quite simple, to wit:

CMU has no business trying to be in the information-denial business. It claims to be a university. Such entities derive their strength from exactly the opposite stance from that which CMU has taken.
CMU stands a chance of actually setting precedent elsewhere, for other universities, if it continues in this policy. CMU claims to be a great university, a leader. Such leadership may convince administrators at other universities, no matter how misguided, that they should follow its example. Indeed, if CMU has much of an influence in this way, it stands to be vilified by academics everywhere as being the first, fatal hole in the dike.

Many of my relatives have attended both CMU and MIT. I have friends and colleagues who are currently at CMU. I often get the impression from some of them that there is a feeling of rivalrous inferiority to MIT in some areas, and that CMU is trying to assert its dominance in these areas and to emerge from under MIT's shadow. Yet the administration's shenanigans in the area of freedom of expression seem more suited to a second- or third-rate local university than one that claims to be a world-class institution. This is not the way to garner respect in academia.

As an MIT graduate and current member of the MIT community who was, at one time, offered admission to CMU, I feel both vindicated in my decision not to attend and simultaneously apprehensive that you may listen to alumni voices with greater attention. It is for this reason that I have taken the step of informing you that, by continuing in your current policy, you not only risk alienating your own faculty, colleagues of CMU, and your own alumni, but you also run the considerable risk of losing the best and the brightest of the next generation of students and faculty to other institutions---institutions that take more seriously their committment to education, free access to information, and a moral, principled stance to protect them.

Sincerely,
Leonard N. Foner

CC: Erwin Steinberg

Lenny Foner

Last modified: Thu May 18 05:55:44 1995