An Email with Instructions to Faculty

Yesterday (August 3), two undergraduate student journalists independently reported on an email that was sent to CAS faculty on July 29. Grace Ferguson broke the story with an excellent example of journalistic work on WTBU, the student-run university radio station, and Katarzyna Jezak of the Daily Free Press, an independent student newspaper, further reported on it in a great article titled “CAS professors asked to self-censor in communication with students.”

For the record: I didn’t leak this letter, and I have a policy of not posting internal BU documents on my website without permission of their authors. But I am not a journalist. I think it is completely appropriate for journalists to report on university politics, and faculty should feel free to be interviewed by journalists. Fortunately, Provost Jean Morrison is also a defender of free speech rights: ‘Free and unfettered speech is at the core of our mission as a university, and it must be central to who we are as a campus community. This means allowing all voices to be heard and for robust and critical debate of the ideas expressed.’

A link to Grace Ferguson’s radio report and transcript was retweeted widely on Twitter, e.g. by a Boston Globe reporter, and by Carl T. Bergstrom, popular biology professor and author of “Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World.”