UO Public Records office finally gives RG IAAF track bid documents 01/31/2015

UO Public Records office finally gives RG IAAF track bid documents

http://www.uomatters.com/2015/01/paul-weinhold-was-planning-to-mortgage-uo-for-track-towns-losing-iaaf-bid.html

— but what did the Presidential Archives show?

1/31/2015 update:

I’ll go out on a limb and guess that Dave Hubin’s office carefully scrubbed these records before deciding what to hand over to RG News Editor Christian Wihtol. Presumably the good stuff is in UO’s Presidential Archives though – or was, until Interim GC Doug Park got his hands on them:

11/25/2014: Paul Weinhold was planning to mortgage UO for Track-Town’s losing IAAF bid

This latest athletics scandal is not going to help UO hire a new President – at least not the sort we need. Diane Dietz’s blockbuster story (in the RegisterGuard tomorrow, online tonight) seems to have made UO Foundation President Paul Weinhold very nervous:

The foundation’s financial guarantee to the IAAF set no upper limit on what the foundation would have been liable for if the Eugene event had turned into a money loser. …

Weinhold said the UO Foundation faced minimal risk in agreeing to cover meet losses because TrackTown USA’s budget was thoroughly vetted and reliable [Editor: Like the Knight Arena budget?]; Kitzhaber favored the legislation that would have provided millions in state support; and the foundation had confidential side deals meant to hold the foundation harmless, Weinhold said in the interview. Weinhold declined to disclose any specifics of those side deals.

“We do not believe we had any exposure, and we had agreements in place that eliminated our exposure. That should be enough for you,” he said.

He should be nervous, given Oregon’s public meetings law, and what he says about the role of the UO Board, which is subject to that law:

Weinhold said the foundation made sure the UO leadership was informed of financial guarantees being made to the IAAF.

“There was full knowledge from the (UO) board to the (UO) president of exactly what we were doing — providing this guarantee,” Weinhold said.

Weinhold said the foundation’s plan was not presented to the Board of Trustees as a whole, but rather in conversations with individuals.

“There was a review with various people at different times — the board leadership with the president with others involved.”

The Board of Trustees didn’t object, but that did not mean that the foundation had an implied approval from the board for the venture, Weinhold said.

“I didn’t say it was implied permission. We didn’t ever talk about permission. We talked about the vision, the benefit to the University of Oregon.”

And then:

“The foundation served this same role with the World Juniors this past summer,” Weinhold told the international body, “and is serving this role with the World Indoor Championships in Portland in 2016.”

The foundation describes its public mission to the Internal Revenue Service — which grants the foundation’s nonprofit status — as “supporting the University of Oregon’s mission of education, research and entrepreneurship…”

Weinhold initially said this week that the Portland meet — not at the UO and not a UO event — was a little far afield.

“That doesn’t help the university in much of any way,” he said. Then he added, “Let me back up. It doesn’t help the university in the way that the World Juniors did, or the World Championship (would have), but it was all part of a three-part series to host the World Championships.”

The foundation believed it would have a better chance of clinching the world championships if it agreed to guarantee all three events, Weinhold said.

The foundation made sure it wouldn’t violate IRS rules by backing the track event, he said. “This was reviewed by our legal counsel and our auditors,” he said.

But after 2016, the foundation has no plans to continue to be a guarantor — “not unless there’s some benefit to the University of Oregon,” Weinhold said. …

Perhaps Eugene lost because we didn’t offer IAAF President Lamine Diack a large enough bribe? I’m guessing the Foundation will try again for 2021, with still more of our money, and even less transparency.  Full disclosure: Last year the UO Foundationthreatened to sue me for defamation, for posting that they were “Money laundering for the Duck Athletic Fund”. I really don’t know what to say about this latest, except to say that Milton Friedman was right about “spending other people’s money”.

UO Board Secretary Angela Wilhelm kicked Dietz and me out of the UO Board meeting about this proposal. So say what you will about the corrupt IAAF – at least they posted the video. Vin Lananna, Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown, Paul Weinhold, and others trying to spend UO’s money. The whole sad thing is worth watching, but I’ve set this to start with Kitzhaber promising to chip in $20 from every Oregon taxpayer (yep, Beavers too), to help out UO’s very high-maintenance Uncle Phil:

Digital archivist goes rogue, and wins big in court 01/30/2015

Digital archivist goes rogue, and wins big in court

The Chronicle of Philanthropy has the news:

A federal judge today handed open-records activist Carl Malamud a victory in his battle to get the Internal Revenue Service to release Form 990 tax returns in a format that can be read by computers, thus making information about nonprofit operations far more accessible.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick rejected the IRS’s argument that producing the documents requested by Mr. Malamud’s group, Public.Resource.Org, would create a significant burden on an overstretched agency.

“The fact that an agency may be under significant financial distress because it is underfunded does not excuse an agency’s duty to comply with the [Freedom of Information Act],” he said in a ruling filed in U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California.

Some people never learn. You can’t win a fight against an archivist. Not even the IRS.

Noted sociologist pays $87,500 for intentionally crippled AAU rape survey

  01/29/2015

http://www.uomatters.com

OUS cuts special deal for Frohnmayer and Rudnick 03/30/2013

OUS cuts special deal for Frohnmayer and Rudnick

  

http://www.uomatters.com/2013/03/ous-cuts-special-deal-for-frohnmayer.html

3/29/2013: OUS’s Oregon Administrative Rule 580 exempts a few things from the normal transparent competitive bidding process for state procurement:

(k) Goods or services related to intercollegiate athletic programs.
(L) Cadavers or cadaveric organs.
…
(u) Contracts for professional or expert witnesses or consultants to provide services or testimony relating to existing or potential litigation or legal matters in which an Institution is or may become interested.

At its April 5 meeting the board is going to amend that a little, adding all legal services to the list, so that UO can hire firms like Rudnick and Frohnmayer’s HLGR in secret, and without competitive bids:

I’ve written before about Dave Frohnmayer’s success at using his state funded sabbatical to restart his legal career at Harrang, Long, Gary and Rudnick. (Full disclosure: Frohnmayer emailed me back in January, taking umbrage with some of my statements about the golden parachute deal he negotiated with Pernsteiner while simultaneously trying convince the faculty and staff to take furloughs.) HLGR then used Frohnmayer’s UO connections as a hook to get legal work from UO and OUS, while simultaneously promising there was no conflict of interest – thought they neglected to note Frohnmayer was still on the UO payroll. It took a petition to the AG and the help of Phil Barhart’s office to get UO to fork over the proposals. I love that “and at your discretion” part of the HLGR proposal:

Who will do UO’s legal work? 10/11/2011

Who will do UO’s legal work?

  

http://www.uomatters.com/2011/10/who-will-do-uos-legal-work.html

10/11/2011: Currently the DOJ handles litigation and many other matters for UO and the OUS system. SB 242 devolves responsibility that to OUS and the universities. UO General Counsel Randy Geller wants to subcontract a chunk of this work out. His request for proposals was augmented by an amendment from OUS.

The RFP closed 9/11. A month to the day after a public records request to UO, I’ve finally obtained the bids for 6 of the 37 firms. It took the help of a state representative and a petition to Attorney General Kroger to get UO to release these, I am still trying to get the other 31.

The proposal from Dave Frohnmayer’s firm, Harrang, Long, Gary and Rudnick is particularly interesting. Understandably, the firm wants to brag about his UO connections: 

Dave Frohnmayer, Part-Time Of Counsel (15 years of government practice/Admitted
in Oregon 1971, OSB #710015). While Dave is not a full-time attorney with the firm, he is available for consultation on matters as UO-PSU-OSU-CO/OUS deems fit (and at your discretion). As you are well aware, Dave is not only a former Attorney General for the State of Oregon, but he also has extensive experience in higher education and with the UO in particular as a former President. As such, Dave has deep connections both in Oregon and internationally (particularly in Germany and the Pacific Rim). He also maintains connections with the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Society of Attorneys General Emeritus (SAGE) and other groups within the legal community, which may be of benefit to UO-PSU-OSU-CO/OUS. Alternatively, UO-PSU-OSU-CO/OUS may request that Dave recuse himself from some or all matters, or that the firm create a firewall between him and some, or all, firm activities related to UO-PSU-OSU-CO/OUS

Oregon's not-so-pretty racist past is not yet history

Oregon's not-so-pretty racist past is not yet history

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/23/1359413/-Oregon-s-not-so-pretty-past-is-not-yet-history#comments

If your impression of Oregon as a quirky island of tolerance is formed by its blue-state status and its history of progressive ballot measures (or by watching Portlandia), you should check out a fascinating history long-read by Matt Novak, writing for Gizmodo. Novak goes into great detail about Oregon's mostly-swept-under-the-rug racist past.

For starters, Oregon is the only state that explicitly enshrined outright racial exclusion into its state constitution at its founding, forbidding any black residents from living there. Novak details not just decades of Jim Crow-style segregation in Portland businesses, but also the mostly-forgotten Vanport flood, which wiped out a mostly-black section of Portland in 1948, and, maybe most shockingly, the KKK's infiltration into the state's corridors of power in the 1920s. If you've ever wondered why Portland is the nation's whitest major city, it's not merely a demographic accident.

Oregon has changed since the 1920s, but not as much as you might think. In 2002, a ballot measure passed which removed the language of racial exclusion from the constitution, and other racial references as well. You might imagine this would be a slam-dunk, nearly unanimous vote - but 29% voted against it, in a familiar geographic pattern as seen in the map above. One county passed it with only 53%. (This should be embarrassing enough, but Measure 14 actually did better than last year's equal rights amendment, Measure 89, whichdid not pass in a dozen counties.)

It's tempting to think the county-level pattern seen in Oregon's election results is the result ofmigration to Oregon's larger cities from all over the country, leaving more rural counties as representatives of an earlier incarnation of Oregon political culture. Census data show usthat's not really the case, however. There's plenty of people born outside of Oregon living in rural areas as well - they're just not liberal.

It's easy to forget the extent of political diversity within states in a winner-take-all electoral system. And it's easier to leave history in the dustbin when it conflicts with the story we want to tell ourselves about our country and our communities. But history lives on and shapes our current society and its politics, whether we acknowledge it or not.

See also Mark Sumner's post on the subject.

Cache of Records Released by U. of Oregon Is Returned

Cache of Records Released by U. of Oregon Is Returned

http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/cache-of-records-released-from-u-of-oregon-is-returned/92919

The 22,000 University of Oregon records that were released without permission to a professor have been returned, The Register-Guard reports. According to the university, the records contained confidential information about faculty members, staff members, and students that should have been combed out before their release.

The Chronicle identified the recipient of the records as William T. Harbaugh, an economics professor who runs the blog UO Matters, which advocates for administrative transparency. Two Oregon employees were placed on administrative leave after the documents’ release.

“What was at stake went beyond a concern that confidential information was shared before being appropriately processed,” said the provost, Frances Bronet, in a letter on Wednesday. “Of greater concern is that the release violated the trust of the students, parents, faculty members, and others who saw the Office of the President as a safe place to share concerns or seek assistance.”

UO professor Bill Harbaugh returns 22,000 pages, declares victory in exposing 'obsessive secrecy'

http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2015/01/new_post_on_bill_harbaugh.html

Heshner Hunter is HLGR!! the thief above the law Frohnmayer, lawless firm who's still in charge of the UO!!!

EUGENE — Why'd you give them back, Bill?

University of Oregon Economics Professor Bill Harbaugh stopped, composing his thoughts. A good minute ticked by. Harbaugh, a tenured faculty member with a high forehead and shock of white hair, gazed past students passing a busy lunch restaurant Wednesday across from campus.
There was his job to consider, and the fates of the two archivists whose decision to release 22,000 pages of presidential records put them at risk of their jobs. There was the assertion by Scott Coltrane, UO interim president, that the documents were unlawfully released because they contained confidential faculty, student and staff information.
Then there was Harbaugh's reputation as a campus contrarian, a needle in the sides of administrators repeatedly jabbed in his irreverent blog, UOMatters. Before Harbaugh acknowledged this week that he was the unidentified professor holding the records, there was the mystery of what he now dubs LibraryGate, and the prolonged embarrassment it caused Coltrane and his administration.
Ultimately, Harbaugh said Wednesday, he believed he'd achieved his aim when he returned the documents on condition that private information would be removed and the rest made public in the archives.
"I'm not trying to post documents that are legitimately protected by student privacy or other laws," Harbaugh said. "I'm trying to make a point about the university's obsessive secrecy, about how it functions, makes decisions and operates as a public agency."
Point made. And generally well taken, judging by the collegial atmosphere at Wednesday afternoon's Faculty Senate meeting, where Coltrane elaborated on his administration's actions and pledged to overhaul records procedures.
Responding to a nervous request from Harbaugh, Coltrane agreed to waive attorney-client privilege that might have made the 55-year-old professor liable for releasing privileged information in a UO lawyer's 2012 memo advocating dissolution of the Faculty Senate.
"I think attorney-client privilege is important," Coltrane said. "There's lots of things I wouldn't want released, and some things I think I would like to share."
"I'm happy to talk with the Senate about under what conditions which legal opinions should be shared. That's one that, had it been shared at the time, would have been fairly inflammatory. But you'll also notice that that advice was not taken by my ... predecessor."
Frances Bronet, UO acting senior vice president and provost, backed down from the contention of unlawful release in a memo issued Wednesday announcing the documents' return. She wrote that release of the electronic documents "bypassed archival processing procedures."
"We hired an independent law firm, Hershner Hunter," Bronet wrote, "to complete this inquiry so that we can identify how and why confidential documents were disclosed, and take steps to ensure that something like this never happens again."
During an interview, Coltrane said the President's Office transmits records electronically to the university's archives division, which is supposed to cull confidential information, consulting with UO lawyers as necessary.
According to his version of procedures, archivists James Fox and Kira Homo, who have been placed on paid administrative leave while the investigation continues, might have failed to protect privacy rights when the archives division gave Harbaugh a zip drive containing the 22,000 pages.
Fox again declined to comment Wednesday. Homo did not respond to an inquiry relayed by an officer of the faculty union, where she serves as secretary.
If the librarians could talk, they might cite professional codes that instruct archivists to make information public. One guideline urges archivists to protect the privacy of library patrons, to the extent of resisting subpoenas.
That apparently didn't happen in this situation, as administrators traced the document dump to Harbaugh after he posted the attorney's memo Jan. 4.
In an interview before the faculty meeting, Harbaugh said he reviewed enough of the 22,000 pages, before giving the zip drive to his lawyer for safekeeping, to conclude that the university fails to preserve enough presidential records.
For example, he said, "emails that mentioned attachments, with no attachments."
Harbaugh is the son of a prominent history professor, the late William H. Harbaugh, a longtime University of Virginia faculty member who wrote acclaimed biographies of President Theodore Roosevelt and presidential candidate John W. Davis. UO's Harbaugh delights in teachable moments, such as the point when students, who have cheered as their fictional stock picks soar, groan when they burst in an economic bubble.
Harbaugh's research is eclectic. He and co-authors have produced papers ranging from "Neural Responses to Taxation and Voluntary Giving Reveal Motives for Charitable Donations," to "The Menstrual Cycle and Performance Feedback Alter Gender Differences in Competitive Choices."
Harbaugh's blog can be snarky. He's accustomed to receiving personal insults on his site, on oregonlive and other forums.
But he enjoys support on campus, judging by sources who feed him information and by the comments of a student, senior Andrew Lubash, who spoke during the faculty meeting. Lubash, a political-science/economics major described "seemingly constant attempts by the administration and the general counsel to cut faculty and students out of the decision-making process."
Perhaps Harbaugh's most significant exposure of irony came in 2009 when he scanned and posted the 2008 Public Records and Meetings Manual, provoking the ire of then-Attorney General John Kroger, who since moved from the Department of Justice to become president of Reed College.
"I have posted it without their permission, despite their explicit warning to me that it not be redistributed," Harbaugh wrote at the time. "You can go here to buy a dead-tree version from the DOJ for $25, or download mine free."
Harbaugh noted that the cover of the manual, updated by the state every two years, featured an 1822 quote from founding father James Madison, the fourth U.S. president, which said in part: "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both."
Harbaugh sees both farce and tragedy in his latest episode, LibraryGate. He called Coltrane's email alleging unlawful release of records "outrageously premature judgment on his part, and I'm assuming Tobin Klinger wrote it – but I can't be sure until I get the next set of presidential archives."
Klinger is the UO's senior director of public affairs communications. He has fielded many of the media's questions concerning the wayward presidential archives.
"There are always embarrassing things in archives," Harbaugh said. "That's why historians love them."
"I can guarantee I'm a better muckraker than I would be a university president," said Harbaugh, granting that administrators have difficult jobs. "I think there's a role to play for people to point out what's wrong with how things are being managed."
As a search committee seeks the UO's next president, Harbaugh said the next leader must be able to raise money, to talk to the faculty -- which must maintain the university's status as a top research institution.
"If we get a person who doesn't know how to do that," Harbaugh said, "it'll be the end of this place."

"Heshner Hunter" is HLGR!! the thief above the law Dave Frohnmayer, lawless firm who's still in charge of the UO!!!

rread@oregonian.com
503-294-5135; @ReadOregonian

Editorial: Growing moral vacuity: On Dave Frohnmayer and Big Tobacco:

http://www.thedalleschronicle.com/news/2013/oct/10/editorial-growing-moral-vacuity/#h45949-p6

The Daily Astorian, Oct. 1, on Dave Frohnmayer and Big Tobacco:

#The prominent public figure who loses his way has become a staple of the last decade. Perhaps it is because we know more about our public figures. Perhaps it’s because their careers are running longer. Perhaps it’s because temptation looms larger these days.

#Dave Frohnmayer is the latest Oregon politician to surprise us. Willamette Week reported last week that Oregon’s former attorney general was compensated by tobacco companies to be their witness in their case arguing they should pay less to the state of Oregon. To anyone familiar with Frohnmayer’s history over the past three decades, this news prompted a double-take and a response of “Huh?”

#WW described Frohnmayer as “the star witness and paid expert for Big Tobacco against the state of Oregon.” It happened during a closed arbitration panel in Chicago. The newspaper obtained Frohnmayer’s testimony through a public records request to the state Department of Justice. It reported that Frohnmayer assisted “tobacco firms trying to get out of making payments to the state of Oregon under the tobacco settlement reached more than a decade ago.”

#The Portland lawyer Bob Stoll was asked by WW to examine Frohnmaher’s testimony to the arbitration panel and comment. Stoll said: “It’s disappointing that somebody with such a stellar reputation would use that reputation for money from such a reprehensible industry.”

#One way of understanding Frohnmayer’s assistance to Big Tobacco is that the Eugene law firm he joined has represented Philip Morris. But he had the freedom to say “no” to Big Tobacco’s request.

#

Frohnmayer’s latest ethics problem 06/15/2012

http://www.uomatters.com/2012/06/ethics-complaint-filed-against.html

Frohnmayer’s latest ethics problem

  06/15/2012

6/15/2012 update: I’m no legal ethics professor, but this doesn’t look good for Frohnmayer:

Where are the uncensored Presidential Archives? Ask Klinger 01/28/2015

Where are the uncensored Presidential Archives? Ask Klinger

  01/28/2015

I’m directing all media inquiries about LibraryGate to our $115K-a-year Deputy Strategic Communicator and self described “Duck advocate“, Tobin Klinger:

Chronicle publishes mini-profile on UO Matters blogger 01/27/2015

http://www.uomatters.com/2015/01/chronicle-publishes-mini-profile-on-uo-matters-blogger.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Chronicle publishes mini-profile on UO Matters blogger

  01/27/2015

“The Open Records King of Eugene”, by Eric Kelderman, here. (Gated if you’re off campus). Some extracts:

Since 2009 the University of Oregon has had five presidents, including interim officeholders. It has gone through four athletic directors, and it’s now advertising for its fourth general counsel.

During that time the institution has endured an almost endless stream of controversies, involving athletics, governance, union contracts, and allegations that the administration mishandled reports of sexual assaults by three student basketball players.

Through it all, there’s been one constant: William T. Harbaugh. Mr. Harbaugh, a professor of economics, has chronicled every twist and turn on his blog, UOMatters—a project he began more than five years ago, he says, to shed light on an administration that many believe lacks adequate transparency.

The blog, along with his persistent requests for public records, has earned Mr. Harbaugh the reputation of a muckraker, a thorn in the side of the administration, and the sharp end of faculty discontent.

In a narrow sense, Mr. Harbaugh might appear to fill the role of a well-known stereotype: The cranky campus crusader who is never happy and rarely effective. What sets Mr. Harbaugh apart is his ability to effect change through both the sharing of information with the university community and his work setting policy. …

Mr. Harbaugh is also an active member of the University Senate, where he is credited with leading efforts to pass several pieces of legislation, including measures relating to faculty involvement in the hiring and review of administrators. Administrators generally tell Mr. Harbaugh that they hate his blog, he says. …

“The most common comment I get is: ‘I really appreciate what you do and your willingness to stick your neck out,’” he says. …

The blog, meanwhile, has become a must-read for the region’s journalists—and for anyone else who is hungry for the unofficial version of the university’s actions. And there has been no shortage of material for the professor to skewer. …

Mr. Harbaugh says the university has strong free-speech protections for faculty members. He feels confident in his legal position. And he’s unlikely to back down quietly.

“I love the university and the state,” he says. “They’re not going to get me to leave here; I’m going to make this a better place.”

Oregonian, RG, WWeek post Blandy and Altmann’s demand for takedown of UO Presidential Archives 01/26/2015

Oregonian, RG, WWeek post Blandy and Altmann’s demand for takedown of UO Presidential Archives

http://www.uomatters.com/2015/01/oregonian-rg-wweek-post-blandy-and-altmanns-archives-takedown-demand.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

« Faculty Union Bargaining Kick-Off: Tuesday, 6-7 PM, 220 HEDCO

Dana Altman and UO hire MillerNash for basketball rape allegation case»

Oregonian, RG, WWeek post Blandy and Altmann’s demand for takedown of UO Presidential Archives

  01/26/2015

“Zip drive”? I had one of those – back in 1994.

“Remove any documents you have posted on the internet”? You mean the confidential Geller/Berdahl/Hubin legal opinion about dissolving the UO Senate? Sorry guys, that’s not how the internet works. The RG, Oregonian and Internet Archive have already, uh, archived it.

The Diane Dietz report in the RG is here:

The letter to the unnamed professor warned “any further disclosure of confidential documents would be in direct contravention of your responsibility as a member of the faculty.”

The letter was signed by Barbara Altmann, vice provost for Academic Affairs. The professor got the documents from the UO library archives on Dec. 3.

The unnamed professor has not returned documents — which were delivered to the professor electronically — to the university. Two archivists are on leave pending an investigation on how the documents were released.

To date, one document and a set of emails appeared on the UO insider blog uomatters.com published by UO economics professor Bill Harbaugh. The single 14-page document suggested dissolving the University Senate in the wake of the faculty’s vote to form a union in 2012.

Who Owns & Controls Mainstream Media in America

Who Owns & Controls Mainstream Media in America

Coltrane looking for new Senior Executive Assistant 01/26/2015

Coltrane looking for new Senior Executive Assistant

  01/26/2015

Job ad here. Rumor has it that Board Secretary Angela Wilhelms wants a Chuck Triplett type, who will keep her and Chairman Chuck Lillis informed about exactly what UO’s President is up to:

Title: Senior Executive Assistant

The University of Oregon seeks applications for the Senior Executive Assistant for the Office of the President position. The Office of the President is the chief executive office for the University of Oregon. The office consists of the president, chief of staff, and several high-level executive and administrative support positions. The office staff works to provide efficient and responsible operation of the president’s office in support of the president’s initiatives and priorities in service to the students, staff, and faculty, as well as the Board of Trustees and external partners of the institution.

Tagged Angela Wilhelms, Charles Triplett. Bookmark the permalink.

Leaked University of Oregon letter warns professor to immediately return 22,000 pages

http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2015/01/university_of_oregon_letter_in.html

University of Oregon officials warned a professor holding 22,000 pages of records that further disclosure of their contents would violate his responsibility as a faculty member, according to a UO letter obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Doug Blandy, UO senior vice provost for academic affairs, wrote to the unidentified professor Jan. 20, saying a zip drive released by university archivists Dec. 3 contained "confidential communications that are protected by the attorney-client privilege and for which the privilege has not been waived."

Blandy also wrote that the documents, which include emails to and from four former UO presidents, contained confidential student, faculty and staff records whose disclosure violated state and federal laws.

"You should immediately discontinue any review of the documents," Blandy wrote, "gather or retrieve any and all copies that you have made, remove any documents that you have posted on the Internet, and return the originals and all copies of the documents to the Dean of the Libraries, Adriene Lim, by 5 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 22 or sooner."

STOPE THE HATE!! STOP STEALING OUR HOMES AND PREVENT US FROM GETTING EMPLOYEED!

https://www.facebook.com/102257986634123/photos/pcb.348076972052222/348076775385575/?type=1&theater

HOLD DAVE FROHNMAYER AND BOB ACKERMAN ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR CRIMES AGAINST ME!      

https://www.facebook.com/groups/justice4nadiasindi

www.davefrohnmayer.com

Please sign both petitions.

https://www.change.org/petitions/a-g-eric-holder-sent-jeff-merkley-gov-john-kitzhaber-investigate-abuse-of-power-and-criminal-forgery-by-former-oregon-a-g-david-frohnmayer-and-lane-county-government#share

And this one with Causes too. Thanks!

https://www.causes.com/posts/899197

www.davefrohnmayer.com

LibraryGate: NYT confirms crackdown on access to Presidential Archives 01/25/2015

LibraryGate: NYT confirms crackdown on access to Presidential Archives

  

http://www.uomatters.com/2015/01/bob-keefers-eugene-art-talk-blogs-about-friday-faculty-party-archives-gossip.html

1/25/2015: Rachel Donadio has the story in the NY Times, here:

… Every archival official knows that he or she would be safer” erring on the side of “denying access to documents.” The problems are both bureaucratic and political. The slow-moving federal committee in charge of declassifiying state archive material has been renamed the Commission on State Secrets, and it sees its mandate as protecting them, scholars say. …

Others scholars offer tales of more recent closures. Mark Kramer, the director of cold war studies at Harvard, cites the abrupt closing, in September 2003, of material on Stalin’s postwar foreign policy that had been available since the early ’90s. “One day I was able to order files … and a couple of days later I was told that the whole opis” — or batch of material — “had been sealed and would need to be re-declassified,” Kramer said in an e-mail message. “I was no longer permitted to see even the files I had pored over in the past.” Similarly, James Person, an associate at the Cold War International History Project, which publishes material from former Communist countries, said that five years ago he consulted documents from 1956 concerning the Soviet relationship with North Korea; when he returned in March 2006, they had been reclassified.

But many researchers find imaginative side doors. “You don’t give up because you can’t get into the presidential archive in Moscow, which is still the holy of holies,” James Hershberg, a historian at George Washington University, said of the former Politburo archive that contains the most sensitive material.

Oh, wait. This is from 2007, and it’s about Russia’s President Vladmir Putin, not UO’s President Scott Coltrane. And so far has I can tell Putin has never demanded the return of “unlawfully released archives”, threatened a professor for posting archived documents on the web and demanded that they be taken down, or put librarians or archivists on leave for making archives available to the public.

Bob Keefer’s Eugene Art Talk repots on Friday’s faculty party Archives gossip 01/24/2015

https://eugenearttalk.com

Bob Keefer’s Eugene Art Talk repots on Friday’s faculty party Archives gossip

http://www.uomatters.com/2015/01/bob-keefers-eugene-art-talk-blogs-about-friday-faculty-party-archives-gossip.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Here. I’ll have a report on the Saturday parties after this one quiets down, and more rumors trickle in. As always, I advise faculty to check VP Robin Holmes’ website and obey Eugene’s “Ordinance on Unruly Gatherings”, especially if you’re inviting professors from the natural sciences. The comments are open.

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RG editorial on Presidential Archives records release 01/24/2015

RG editorial on Presidential Archives records release

http://www.uomatters.com/2015/01/rg-editorial-on-presidential-archives-records-release.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

1/24/2014: The case of the UO records. In the Register Guard, here:

Decoding the curious case of the University of Oregon’s misdirected records requires the deductive powers of a master sleuth — one with an ear for dogs that do not bark, an eye that can detect the fig behind the leaf, and a nose that will wrinkle at the whiff of a rat. But in the absence of a Holmes, a Columbo or even a Clouseau, ordinary Ducks are left to sort through the case on their own by eliminating various possibilities.

Did an unnamed professor do anything wrong when he obtained 22,000 pages of UO presidential documents? Apparently not — the records were placed in the university’s open archives, and were available to anyone. All that sets the professor apart from other members of the public was that he knew what to ask for.

Did the UO’s librarians or archivists, two of whom have been placed on paid leave for releasing the records, commit a breach? Evidently not — making archival materials available to the public is the very essence of their job. The records should have been redacted to protect against the release of such material as legally protected information about students, but redactions should be made by those who are the source of the documents and know what they contain.

Did the office of the president or someone else in the administration cause grave offense? A spokesman for the president says the documents do not contain Social Security numbers, medical records or financial data, eliminating several of the most serious possible violations of student privacy. So far no damage has been done.

Did the UO’s librarians commit a breach? Evidently not — making archives public is the very essence of their job:

Did the UO’s librarians commit a breach? Evidently not — making archives public is the very essence of their job: http://registerguard.com/rg/opinion/32687304-78/the-case-of-the-uo-records.html.csp …