[FOSDEM] Academic Freedom vs CoC at FOSDEM

[Jens]

I'll bite, but only once.

I read the Anderson case ruling, and it's quite interesting. The court
agreed with the professor, but on the merits of the case as presented,
not on anything relating to codes of conduct or academic liberty in
general.

What's important to understand is that Dr. Anderson got fired after
posting anti-semitic content. The contract the university had with Dr.
Anderson granted him academic liberty, but also referred to a code of
conduct as the standards to which employees should adhere.

The court case revolved entirely around the technicalities of how the
firing was conducted. The problem was just contractual. The contract
was not explicit in giving appropriate weight to the code of conduct
in comparison to the guarantees of academic freedom given elsewhere.
The firing furthermore did not provide an explanation how, in the face
of this, the behaviour amounted to the kind of serious misconduct that
permits firing of this kind.

**None of this applies here.**

- You (or anyone else) don't have an employment relationship with FOSDEM
  that can be terminated.
- The only legal conditions to participation is that one abides by the
  code of conduct. There is no conflicting state of documentation that
  needs to be resolved.
- This case isn't about academic freedom at all. It is about how
  contracts are phrased to balance conflicting documents, which, as
  per above, does not apply here. Mechanically, it's pure coincidence
  that one of the documents was titled "code of conduct" and the other
  referred to "academic freedom".
- The case isn't even resolved, it's referred back to the original
  judge.

In other words, your example of Dr. Anderson is misleading. It does
not relate in any meaningful way, nor does it have anything to say about
the value of academic freedom versus a code of conduct.

Whether intentional or not, I won't judge, but you are far from
"presenting both sides of the story".

You're also undermining the efforts of a team of volunteers to run as
inclusive an event as possible. They're very likely so busy that they
won't be able to goole for and read the ruling as I have done. Refering
to it preys on their good intentions, which effectively turns this claim
that the case is relevant into a social engineering denial of service attack.

(FWIW, ruling is at
https://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/full/2021/2021fcafc0159 )

I'm done with this thread.

- Jens



On Sun, Jan 09, 2022 at 11:38:11PM +0100, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> 
> 
> On 09/01/2022 23:26, Jens Finkhäuser wrote:
> > Don't put words into other people's mouth. Let "the entire academic community" speak for itself.
> 
> I hope they do.  Many mailing lists, even LibrePlanet, are subject to
> some sort of censorship now.
> 
> > Liberty is an often misunderstood concept. It's not everyone doing whatever they want. If it impacts the ability of others to participate, it's not liberty, but privilege. A Code of Conduct tries to ensure that that's not happening.
> > 
> > You want to rant about that, that's your choice. Not one I would take. 
> 
> No, I don't want to rant.  I am presenting both sides of the story
> 
> A rant only covers one side of the story.
> 
> There have been numerous legal cases on Academic Liberty
> 
> Each case has been decided on its merits
> 
> For example, in Australia, we have two opposite examples:
> 
> 
> Prof Tim Anderson - the court agreed with the professor
> 
> Prof Peter Ridd - the court did not agree with the professor
> 
> 
> 
> In respect of the code of conduct, I am not publishing links to the
> image created by Prof Anderson and I don't plan to integrate his imagery
> into my personal blog posts.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Daniel
> 
> -- 
> Debian Developer
> https://danielpocock.com

-- 
1.21 Jiggabytes of memory ought to be enough for anybody.
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