America's universities: Last place you would think to look for Thought Police, right? Show me a university in this nation that isn't committed to instilling in students a hunger to question, criticize, and dissent. It's etched in their mission statements, every one. I can't find a single exception. Yet, at least 20 ivory tower scientists never got the message.
More disturbing, either they never read the First Amendment, don't give a pink poop what it says or are blissfully ignorant of the rights it protects.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, if you haven't heard, please read this letter written last month to President Obama, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. It is the product of 20 university scientists, each of whom signed it.
These scientists who represent some of the most respected institutions in the country want all who would deny climate change to be jailed and criminally prosecuted -- rounded up under the RICO Act like mob bosses in an Edward G. Robinson film. And they're not kidding.
By the way, two of the letter's signatories teach at Florida schools -- T.N. Krishnamurti of Florida State University and Ben Kirtman of the University of Miami.
"We appreciate that you are making aggressive and imaginative use of the limited tools available to you in the face of a recalcitrant Congress," they told the president. "One additional tool -- recently proposed by (Rhode Island Democratic) Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse – is a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change. ... We strongly endorse Senator Whitehouse’s call for a RICO investigation."
The letter is an indictment especially of "corporations in the fossil fuel industry and their supporters." Oh, yes, and it's based not on the authors' individual scientific work, but on "the misdeeds that have been documented in books and journal articles." Specifically, they mention "peer-reviewed academic research (Brulle, 2013) and recent books including: "Doubt is their Product" (Michaels, 2008), "Climate Cover-Up" (Hoggan & Littlemore, 2009), "Merchants of Doubt" (Oreskes & Conway, 2010), "The Climate War" (Pooley, 2010), and "The Climate Deception Dossiers" (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2015)."
The 20 scientists fail to mention misdeeds documented by colleagues on the other side of the climate change issue. One of the misdeeds is being reported in an extensive and ongoing Guardian newspaper investigation right now.
According to the British newspaper, thousands of emails and documents that were apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit produced evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.
British climate scientist Phil Jones and a collaborator have been accused by a climate change skeptic and researcher "of scientific fraud for attempting to suppress data that could cast doubt on a key 1990 study on the effect of cities on warming."
An almost-unanimous climate-change consensus among the scientific community, by the way, is a total myth. Start here to read the debunking, "The 97 Percent Solution" in The National Review.
But my point is, the scientists who wrote the president a letter represent their universities -- George Mason, the University of Washington, Rutgers, the University of Maryland, FSU, the University of Miami, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia. How is it that they can be so dismissive of the fundamental infringement on free speech?
As The Heritage Foundation's Hans von Spakovsky has already asked, how do they not consider the mission statements of their schools ... to promote robust, unchecked, vibrant debate -- not just in the university setting, but in American society, culture, and politics?
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
