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!!!
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
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!!!
503-294-5135; @ReadOregonian
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