Another New Right From The Left.
Liberals love inventing new rights. For the past 18 months I have heard the liberals chirping about the “right to health care”. Now the imaginary liberal rights machine has manufactured a “right to academic freedom”. Yet another pseudo-right extended only to liberals after having been manufactured in the liberals’ invisible rights factory.
There has never been a right to academic freedom. There is no right to academic freedom. And, God Bless, there will never be a right to academic freedom. So, any criticism of Ken Cuccinelli’s Civil Investigative Demand against Michael Mann as violating the right of academic freedom is null and void.
But did Cuccinelli do the right thing? Was there smoke sufficient to indicate a possible fire?
There was already a review of Prof. Mann’s work by a crack team of fellow professors at Penn State, where Mr. Mann now works.
Why did Penn State see the need for a warm and cozy review by fellow academics?
From the final report, “Begining on and about November 22, 2009 The Pennsylvania State University began to receive numerous communications (e-mails, phone calls and letters) having accused Dr. Michael E. Mann of acts which included manipulating data, destroying records and colluding in order to hamper the progress of scientific discourse around the issue of anthpogenic global warming from approximately 1998.”.
Cuccinelli doesn’t need to go looking for a smoking gun, Mann’s collegeues already think they found it.
What did Penn State find?
There were four avenues of inquiry. Dr. Mann was cleared of three allegations by a group of his academic friends perhaps wearing cardigans with leather elbow patches while alighting in the blue curls of pipe smoke wafting around their beards during this “trial”. However, even “cleared” leaves some room to question – “While a perception has been created in the weeks after the CRU e-mails were made public that Dr. Mann had engaged in the suppression or falsification of data there is no credible evidence that he ever did so and certainly not while at Penn State.”.
“…certainly not while at Penn State.”
Unfortunately, Dr. Mann taught at the University of Virginia (not Penn State) from 1999 – 2005.
In the minds of liberals, our elected attorney general should outsource investigations of potential malfeasance to cabals of academics from Pennsylvania. The fact that the investigation involved actions taken in Virginia, at a state university with public funds should be ignored. Ignored, presumably, because of the Right to Academic Freedom written in invisible ink in the liberals’ version of the US Constitution.