Here’s How You Answer an FOIA Request

At least, this is how you answer it if you’re a university. Here’s some brief backstory–Wisconsin Republicans want the emails of a University of Wisconsin professor because he wrote a blog post critical of Governor Scott Walker’s anti-union bill. Here’s how the university responded, according to Talking Points Memo.

“We are excluding records involving students because they are protected under FERPA. We are excluding exchanges that fall outside the realm of the faculty member’s job responsibilities and that could be considered personal pursuant to Wisconsin Supreme Court case law. We are also excluding what we consider to be the private email exchanges among scholars that fall within the orbit of academic freedom and all that is entailed by it. Academic freedom is the freedom to pursue knowledge and develop lines of argument without fear of reprisal for controversial findings and without the premature disclosure of those ideas.”

In other words, this isn’t a carte blanche release of emails, which is important because it was pretty clear that Wisconsin Republicans didn’t really have a reason to request this information. They don’t know what’s in the emails–they were just trying to find something they could smear an eminent historian with. Congratulations to the University of Wisconsin for not bowing to this request.