Academic freedom.

On September 15, 2005 the director of the FBI announced the creation of a National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, consisting of the presidents and chancellors of several prominent U. S. universities and designed to foster outreach and promote understanding between higher education and the FBI (FBI National Press Office, September 15, 2005).

Students, by just doing their homework, are now having their academic freedom challenged. A high school student in North Carolina had fulfilled his senior civics class assignment by creating an anti-Bush poster illustrating the student's right of dissent. When a photo of the poster was developed at the local Wal-Mart, an employee turned the photo over to the Secret Service, who showed up at the high school to confiscate the poster. The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the case further (The Progressive, October 8, 2005). At the university level, a UMass North Dartmouth senior was visited by agents of the Department of Homeland Security after he requested through interlibrary loan a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's "The Little Red Book." The student was completing a research paper on Communism for a class on fascism and totalitarianism (Standard-Times [New Bedford, MA], December 17, 2005).

Professors as well are having their academic freedoms challenged. David Graeber, a Yale anthropology professor renowned in his field, has ignited a letter-writing campaign from professors worldwide when he was not renewed by Yale. Graeber is an anarchist whose countercultural writings are almost as popular as his academic work, carries an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union card, and has been arrested during anti-globalization protests (www.Newsday.com, October 23, 2005). In Mexico, the Supreme Court has ordered Sergio Witz, a poet and professor of literature, to face trial after he published a protest poem ("The Country Among Shit") that proposed using the Mexican flag as toilet paper. If convicted, Professor Witz could be sentenced to a prison term of up to four years (The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 12, 2005).

In "Rogue Scholars" (The Nation, December 26, 2005), Tara McKelvey describes how professors from Harvard's Alan Dershowitz to University of Chicago Law School's Eric Posner support torture in various forms and have made ticking bombs and waterboarding into concepts in an intellectual game.

The American Council on Education filed a lawsuit challenging a new federal requirement that could force colleges to overhaul their computer networks so that law enforcement agencies could monitor emails and other forms of online communication College officials across the country are saying that making the changes would cost billions of dollars and deplete budgets already strained to the breaking point (The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 24, 2005).