Chilling The First

Does the Constitution really protect a right to "academic freedom"? - By Dahlia Lithwick and Richard Schragger - Slate Magazine

'Last week the University of Virginia decided to fight a sweeping subpoena served upon the institution in late April. State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli subpoenaed documents in connection with five grants awarded to Michael Mann—a former UVA climate-change scientist who now teaches at Penn State. Cuccinelli is using a state fraud statute to demand thousands of e-mails between Mann and climate-change scientists around the world. The request was both broad and unprecedented. So the university filed a petition to quash the subpoena on various grounds. Academics across the country have raised alarms, signing petitions and urging Cuccinelli to back off, claiming that this novel use of prosecutorial power to investigate climate science in the academy constitutes a threat to free inquiry. (Disclosure: Richard Schragger was the principal author of such a letter from the UVA law faculty.) These letters and petitions often invoke the First Amendment and quote the U.S. Supreme Court to assert that the Constitution protects "academic freedom."...'

You can parse any legal argument you wish but in the end the effect will be the same-- a chilling effect on academic inquiry, for which we will all be the poorer. Of course, this could be a conservative wet dream-- a mechanism for turning higher education into Texas.