This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: Saint Louis University is threatening a faculty group with a copyright infringement lawsuit if it proceeds with its own supplemental survey on the climate on campus.
The survey, which is designed to focus more sharply on the strained relationship between professors and the Rev. Lawrence Biondi, president of the university, was set to go out last week. But it is on hold because of the threatened legal action.
Steve Harris, a professor in the department of math and computer science who heads the newly regenerated chapter of the American Association of University Professors at SLU, told the Beacon Monday that the latest standoff is not likely to smooth the troubled atmosphere on campus, as a survey sent out last week by the university’s board of trustees was designed to accomplish.
“I have seen comments from trustees to the effect that the survey is just designed to give the university a black eye through publicity,” Harris said.
“There is no way that any survey results could be nearly as damaging to the university’s reputation as what the university counsel is trying to do by suppressing the survey.”
Robert Kreiser of the national office of the AAUP in Washington characterized the university threat with terms like “remarkable, incomprehensible and almost bordering on unconscionable …. I’ll add the word stunning.
“I’ve never come across anything like this.”
The university’s public information office said, "The University will not have any comment at this time."
It was general counsel William Kauffman who threatened legal action last week if the AAUP survey went forward.
As part of an effort designed to smooth over tensions that arose when faculty and student groups approved a no-confidence vote in Biondi and told trustees he should be fired, the university issued a campus climate survey last week.
In part, it asked whether faculty morale is high, whether collaborative decision making exists between the faculty and the SLU administration and whether the “faculty is able to express dissenting views on University matters without fear of reprisal.”
The survey was designed to give trustees a sense of what faculty, staff and students on campus thought in advance of the final board of trustees meeting of the academic year, scheduled for May 4.
Because of that timeline, the questions on the survey were compiled under a tight deadline, and some faculty members thought they did not adequately get at the problems at hand, specifically those involving Biondi.
“The university couched everything in terms of the university,” Harris said. “That doesn’t seem to be getting to the point of the issue” – actions by the university president himself.
At last week’s Faculty Senate meeting, Harris said that a supplemental survey would be put together and distributed on campus by the AAUP. But late last week, he emailed faculty colleagues that the additional survey would be delayed because of a threat of legal action by the university.
Harris quoted Kauffman, the general counsel, as saying that any new survey that is distributed seeking information about campus climate would infringe on the university’s copyright, and that any such infringement "will be addressed by the University and could result in legal action,” including possible monetary damages.
Kauffman said that anyone who has already seen the university’s survey, then puts together a supplemental one, could be considered to have derived the new survey from the existing one and could therefore be considered to have infringed the university’s copyright.
In light of that threat, Harris told colleagues, he did not plan to issue the new survey right away, because he did not want to be considered to be infringing on SLU’s copyright. He said he was going to seek advice on the matter and still hoped to get the supplemental survey out this week.
Harris said that he consulted experts on copyright law who said the university’s stance would not hold up in court, but that view would not necessarily stop SLU from pursuing legal action against him and the AAUP chapter.
He did say on Monday that he would send out a one-question survey, with more designed to come later. That one question asks faculty response to this statement:
“I have confidence in Father Biondi as president of the university.”
Harris added:
“That never appears in the university survey at all, and that’s the only important one.”
Harris said that when he met with Kauffman, the general counsel focused on three questions in the AAUP survey that he said were too closely derived from the university survey. They asked about whether the president respects and values the faculty, whether he fosters adequate collaboration with the faculty and whether he generally responsive to faculty concerns on an institutional level.
Harris said that Kauffman’s concerns “struck me as a far-fetched legal theory of copyright infringement.” He said he had consulted the American Civil Liberties Union about possible infringement of free speech, adding:
“I don’t suspect this is going to be very high on their radar, but at least it’s there.”
But as far as the university’s commitment to free expression, Harris pointed to the SLU Faculty Manual, which he says is a binding legal contract and is “much stronger in its defense of academic freedom than even the AAUP recommends.”
The section in question reads in part:
“Essential to the purpose of a university is the free and unhampered pursuit and communication of knowledge and truth. All members of the University, especially students and faculty members, have not only the right but also the duty to participate in this task of freely seeking after and sharing truth.”
Kreiser at the AAUP headquarters noted that he isn’t a lawyer, but in his 31 years with the organization the threat by SLU is a novel one.
“I find it absolutely phenomenal,” he said, “that somebody in the general counsel’s office at a serious university would threaten faculty with litigation for a survey about shared governance at the university because it might include in it some questions that might resemble questions in a survey developed by the university.”