Should universities censor what gets put on their Web pages?
The University of Michigan has always had a clear stance on this issue. "We do not censor," said Laurie Burns, associate director at the Information Technology Division. What material gets put on the University's page is "based on University policies," Burns said.
"The University values free speech and that is the dominant principle when evaluating material," Burns said. "If there is no violation of policies or laws, free-speech principles are applied."
It is this free-speech policy that has students and faculty up in arms at Northwestern University.
The debate centers around Northwestern University Engineering Prof. Arthur Butz. Northwestern is letting the professor use the university-owned Web server to spread his own view of history to millions.
Butz claims that the Holocaust never actually happened.
In a statement released Jan. 7, Northwestern University President Henry Bienen defends the university's decision to allow Butz's writings, saying, "The network is a free and open forum for the expression of ideas, including viewpoints that are strange, unorthodox or unpopular. The network administrators place no official sanctions upon the expression of personal opinion on the network."
Without sanctions, "he should be protected to say whatever his opinion," said Virginia Rezmierski, associate to the vice provost for information technology at the University of Michigan.
Rezmierski said there are almost no laws governing a private entity's use of the Internet, which would allow Northwestern to censor its pages.
"If they are private, they can basically do what they want to do," she said, adding that Northwestern may even have the right to read others' e-mail.
That is not the case with public institutions, which are bound by the First Amendment, Rezmierski said. However, Internet material must still have certain standards.
"The University has a set of gateway policies," said Sandra Colombo, project area manager for Information Resources and Access Products. These gateway policies are a compilation of existing university policies. "We are trying to make these available to the campus."
Users must, of course, follow federal and state law when using the University server, keeping obscene material such as child pornography off the pages.
The University of Michigan is in the process of making it clearer to Internet users which pages are "official pages" of the University and which are "personal pages."