The-Ave.US

based on material  from Secrecy News

and the San José Mercury

An unclassified report from the CIA, describes the Student Informant System [SIS], a campus spy network established by China’s totalitarian government following Tiananmen Square in 1989.   ‘

The report says that “the principal objective of the Student Informant System [SIS] is to ensure campus stability and to control the debate and discussion of politically sensitive issues… Students have had their scholarships revoked and their academic records penalized because of information provided by student informants that is sometimes highly subjective, such as facial expressions. The SIS employs traditional political spying and denunciation techniques, seeking to create a ‘white terror’ (bai se kong bu) environment on campus — in which students and teachers fear surveillance more than arrest — to achieve and maintain influence and control.”

While our problems in the US are not at this level, recent stories from Michigan State University and from UC San Fransisco are at least worrisome.

The administration at MSU warned a student government leader after she sent email to 391 faculty pretesting admin decisions about teaching at MSU.

At UCSF, Stephen Zunes,  a professor of  middle eastern studies, writes in the Mercury that his students, those who are also ROTC students, have been told that they can not read materials from Wikileaks.

The common thread here is that administrators or government officials, rather than faculty, are making decisions on what students can read or how they can communicate with one another.  The net administrators at MSU or the ROTC colonel at UCSF, presumably have the interests of their programs at heart.  Being an ROTC Colonel or being responsible for an email system, however, ought not to give anyone the authority to set policies on academic freedom.