Category Archives: Freedom

Liberty, in philosophy, involves free will as contrasted with determinism.[1] In politics, liberty consists of the social and political freedoms enjoyed by all citizens.[2] In theology, liberty is freedom from the bondage of sin.[3] Generally, liberty seems to be distinct from freedom in that freedom concerns itself primarily, if not exclusively, with the ability to do as one wills and what one has the power to do; whereas liberty also takes into account the rights of all involved. As such, liberty can be thought of as freedom limited by rights, and therefore cannot be abused.

Philosophers from earliest times have considered the question of liberty. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121180 AD) wrote of "a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed."[4] According to Thomas Hobbes, "a free man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do" (Leviathan, Part 2, Ch. XXI).

John Locke (16321704) rejected that definition of liberty. While not specifically mentioning Hobbes, he attacks Sir Robert Filmer who had the same definition. According to Locke:

John Stuart Mill (18061873), in his work, On Liberty, was the first to recognize the difference between liberty as the freedom to act and liberty as the absence of coercion.[6] In his book, Two Concepts of Liberty, Isaiah Berlin formally framed the differences between these two perspectives as the distinction between two opposite concepts of liberty: positive liberty and negative liberty. The latter designates a negative condition in which an individual is protected from tyranny and the arbitrary exercise of authority, while the former refers to the liberty that comes from self-mastery, the freedom from inner compulsions such as weakness and fear.

The modern concept of political liberty has its origins in the Greek concepts of freedom and slavery.[7] To be free, to the Greeks, was to not have a master, to be independent from a master (to live like one likes).[8] That was the original Greek concept of freedom. It is closely linked with the concept of democracy, as Aristotle put it:

"This, then, is one note of liberty which all democrats affirm to be the principle of their state. Another is that a man should live as he likes. This, they say, is the privilege of a freeman, since, on the other hand, not to live as a man likes is the mark of a slave. This is the second characteristic of democracy, whence has arisen the claim of men to be ruled by none, if possible, or, if this is impossible, to rule and be ruled in turns; and so it contributes to the freedom based upon equality."[9]

This applied only to free men. In Athens, for instance, women could not vote or hold office and were legally and socially dependent on a male relative.[10]

The populations of the Persian Empire enjoyed some degree of freedom. Citizens of all religions and ethnic groups were given the same rights and had the same freedom of religion, women had the same rights as men, and slavery was abolished (550 BC). All the palaces of the kings of Persia were built by paid workers in an era when slaves typically did such work.[11]

In the Buddhist Maurya Empire of ancient India, citizens of all religions and ethnic groups had some rights to freedom, tolerance, and equality. The need for tolerance on an egalitarian basis can be found in the Edicts of Ashoka the Great, which emphasize the importance of tolerance in public policy by the government. The slaughter or capture of prisoners of war was also condemned by Ashoka.[12] Slavery was also non-existent in the Maurya Empire.[13] However, according to Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, "Ashoka's orders seem to have been resisted right from the beginning."[14]

Roman law also embraced certain limited forms of liberty, even under the rule of the Roman Emperors. However, these liberties were accorded only to Roman citizens. Many of the liberties enjoyed under Roman law endured through the Middle Ages, but were enjoyed solely by the nobility, never by the common man. The idea of unalienable and universal liberties had to wait until the Age of Enlightenment.

The social contract theory, most influentially formulated by Hobbes, John Locke and Rousseau (though first suggested by Plato in The Republic), was among the first to provide a political classification of rights, in particular through the notion of sovereignty and of natural rights. The thinkers of the Enlightenment reasoned that law governed both heavenly and human affairs, and that law gave the king his power, rather than the king's power giving force to law. The divine right of kings was thus opposed to the sovereign's unchecked auctoritas. This conception of law would find its culmination in the ideas of Montesquieu. The conception of law as a relationship between individuals, rather than families, came to the fore, and with it the increasing focus on individual liberty as a fundamental reality, given by "Nature and Nature's God," which, in the ideal state, would be as universal as possible.

In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill sought to define the "...nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual," and as such, he describes an inherent and continuous antagonism between liberty and authority and thus, the prevailing question becomes "how to make the fitting adjustment between individual independence and social control".[15]

England and following the Act of Union 1707 Great Britain, laid down the cornerstones to the concept of individual liberty.

In 1166 Henry II of England transformed English law by passing the Assize of Clarendon act. The act, a forerunner to trial by jury, started the abolition of trial by combat and trial by ordeal.[16]

In 1215 the Magna Carta was drawn up, it became the cornerstone of liberty in first England, Great Britain and later, the world.

In 1689 the Bill of Rights grants 'freedom of speech in Parliament', which lays out some of the earliest civil rights.[19]

In 1859 an essay by the philosopher John Stuart Mill, entitled On Liberty argues for toleration and individuality. If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.[20][21]

Also in 1859, Charles Darwin, wrote On The Origin of Species expounding the theory of natural selection. Thomas Henry Huxley defends Darwin against religious fundamentalists who decry his work.[22]

In 1958 Two Concepts of Liberty, by Isaiah Berlin, determines 'negative liberty' as an obstacle, as evident from 'positive liberty' which promotes self-mastery and the concepts of freedom.[23]

In 1948 British representatives attempt to and are prevented from adding a legal framework to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (It was not until 1976 that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights came into force, giving a legal status to most of the Declaration) [24]

The United States of America was one of the first nations to be founded on principles of freedom and equality, with no king and no hereditary nobility. According to the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence, all men have a natural right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". But this declaration of liberty was flawed from the outset by the presence of slavery. Slave owners argued that their liberty was paramount, since it involved property, their slaves, and that the slaves themselves had no rights that any White man was obliged to recognize. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott decision, upheld this principle. It was not until 1866, following the Civil War, that the US constitution was amended to extend these rights to persons of color, and not until 1920 that these rights were extended to women.[25]

By the later half of the 20th century, liberty was expanded further to prohibit government interference with personal choices. In the United States Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut, Justice William O. Douglas argued that liberties relating to personal relationships, such as marriage, have a unique primacy of place in the hierarchy of freedoms.[26] Jacob M. Appel has summarized this principle:

I am grateful that I have rights in the proverbial public square but, as a practical matter, my most cherished rights are those that I possess in my bedroom and hospital room and death chamber. Most people are far more concerned that they can control their own bodies than they are about petitioning Congress.[27]

In modern America, various competing ideologies have divergent views about how best to promote liberty. Liberals in the original sense of the word see equality as a necessary component of freedom. Progressives stress freedom from business monopoly as essential. Libertarians disagree, and see economic freedom as best. And, starting in the early 21st century, the Tea Party movement sees big government as the enemy of freedom.[28][29]

France supported the Americans in their revolt against English rule and, in 1789, overthrew their own monarchy, with the cry of "Libert, galit, fraternit". The bloodbath that followed, known as the reign of terror, soured many people on the idea of liberty. Edmund Burke, considered one of the fathers of conservatism, wrote "The French had shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world."[30]

According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics, liberalism is "the belief that it is the aim of politics to preserve individual rights and to maximize freedom of choice". But they point out that there is considerable discussion about how to achieve those goals. Every discussion of freedom depends of three key components: who is free, what are they free to do, and what forces restrict their freedom.[31] John Gray argues that the core belief of liberalism is toleration. Liberals allow others freedom to do what they want, in exchange for having the same freedom in return. This idea of freedom is personal rather than political.[32] William Safire points out that liberalism is attacked by both the Right and the Left: by the Right for defending such practices as abortion, homosexuality, and atheism, by the Left for defending free enterprise and the rights of the individual over the collective.[33]

According to the Encyclopdia Britannica, Libertarians hold liberty as their primary political value.[34] Libertarian philosophers hold that there is no tenable distinction between personal and economic liberty that they are, indeed, one and the same, to be protected (or opposed) together. In the context of U.S. constitutional law, for example, they point out that the constitution twice lists "life, liberty, and property" without making any distinctions within that phrase.[35] Their approach to implementing liberty involves opposing any governmental coercion, aside from that which is necessary to prevent individuals from coercing each other.[36] This is known as the non-aggression principle.[37]

According to republican theorists of freedom, like the historian Quentin Skinner[38][39] or the philosopher Philip Pettit,[40] one's liberty should not be viewed as the absence of interference in one's actions, but as non-domination. According to this view, which originates in the Roman Digest, to be a liber homo, a free man, means not being subject to another's arbitrary will, that is to say, dominated by another. They also cite Machiavelli who asserted that you must be a member of a free self-governing civil association, a republic, if you are to enjoy individual liberty.[41]

The predominance of this view of liberty among parliamentarians during the English Civil War resulted to the creation of the liberal concept of freedom as non-interference in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan.[citation needed]

Socialists view freedom as a concrete situation as opposed to a purely abstract ideal. Freedom involves agency to pursue one's creative interests unhindered by coercive social relationships that one is forced to engage in in order to survive under a given social system. From this perspective, freedom requires both the material economic conditions that make freedom possible alongside the social relationships and institutions conducive to freedom. As such, the socialist concept of freedom is held in contrast to the liberal concept of freedom.[42]

The socialist conception of freedom is closely related to the socialist view of creativity and individuality. Influenced by Karl Marx's concept of alienated labor, socialists understand freedom to be the ability for an individual to engage in creative work in the absence of alienation, where alienated labor refers to work people are forced to perform and un-alienated work refers to individuals pursuing their own creative interests.[43]

For Karl Marx, meaningful freedom is only attainable in a communist society characterized by superabundance and free access, which would eliminate the need for alienated labor and enable individuals to pursue their own creative interests, leaving them to develop their full potentialities. This goes alongside Marx's emphasis on the reduction of the average length of the workday to expand the "realm of freedom" for each person.[44][45] Marx's notion of communist society and human freedom is thus radically individualistic.[46]

"This also is remarkable in India, that all Indians are free, and no Indian at all is a slave. In this the Indians agree with the Lacedaemonians. Yet the Lacedaemonians have Helots for slaves, who perform the duties of slaves; but the Indians have no slaves at all, much less is any Indian a slave."

Read more:

Liberty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Freedom is a borough in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States, along the Ohio River 25 miles (40km) northwest of Pittsburgh. In the early years of the twentieth century, the chief industries were the production of oil, caskets, and monuments. In 1900, 1,783 people lived in Freedom; in 1910, 3,060 people lived there. The population was 1,763 at the 2000 census. In 1824, the Harmony Society returned to Pennsylvania, from Indiana. The society settled in what is now Ambridge, Pennsylvania, five miles (8km) up the Ohio River. One of the reasons the society left Indiana was because of harassment for their abolitionist activities. Their settlement was in Beaver County along the Ohio River. There they founded "konomie," now better known as Old Economy Village. Here the Society gained worldwide recognition for its religious devotion and economic prosperity. The Harmonites were abolitionists, and began placing signs along the Ohio River with one word, "FREEDOM". The Harmonites selected this location because the river curves at this point. The river is actually flowing North, so runaway slaves from the South would be traveling up the river. The FREEDOM sign on the river bank was to let runaway slaves know that they had reached freedom (and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania). If the runaway slaves were still in Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio, then slave hunters from Kentucky or Virginia could legally cross the river and capture them. Once in Pennsylvania, the slaves were free.

Continued here:
Freedom, PA - Freedom, Pennsylvania Map & Directions - MapQuest

Forgot Your Password?

Please enter your email address below and we will email you your password.

Email me my password

The email you have submitted does not exist.

An email has been sent to your address. Once you have received your information please Log In.

(e.g. Office Properties, Client Jane Smith)

APN No: 017-1-16-0009-A 1992 Urban Design Award of Excellence by the American Institute of Architects. 1993 National Association of Industrial and Office Parks Energy Efficiency Award. Two Fountain Square is the second office building of Phase One of Reston Town Center, a mixed-use regional urban core. Phase One includes twin office towers totalling 500,000 sq ft; 240,000 s.f. of retail; 11-screen multiplex theater; and a 515-room luxury Hyatt Regency Hotel.

Reston

Property Record Data - Historical Listings, current tax, mortgage, owners & tenant info for this property

Reston Market Trends - Asking price index trends, sale price trends, asking rent trends

The LoopNet service and information provided therein, while believed to be accurate, are provided "as is". LoopNet disclaims any and all representations, warranties, or guarantees of any kind.

I am a place holder, please don't judge me!!! (no, I judge you!)

Get the apps

Connect with us

2016 CoStar Group, Inc.

See the original post here:
11921 Freedom Dr, Reston, VA, 20190 - Office Building ...

Freedom Center is a non-profit retreat center, camp and school located on 100 beautiful mostly wooded acres in Loudoun County Virginia. We provide a setting for physical, educational and spiritual experiences for children, youth and adults around the Washington DC area.

The Freedom Center is open year around for retreats, meetings, camping and team building activities, as well as corporate and social events. The Freedom Center offers corporate and social events like reunions, parties, receptions, weddings and picnics. If you need a venue that fosters celebration, learning, reflection, relaxation or robust activity, our scenic rustic property can help fulfill your goals.

Comfortable rooms, spacious recreational areas and a beautiful lake and 5 miles of Hiking/Mountian bike trails are just some of the amenities available to complement your function. And, with our professional, personal service provided by our staff, you can be fully assured that your retreat or event at Freedom Center will be a success.

Freedom Center 13951 Freedom Center Lane Leesburg, Virginia 20176 703-777-3505 phone 703-777-5077 fax email: info@freedomcenter.us Freedom Center is located 7 miles north of Leesburg, Virginia

Here is the original post:
Freedom Center

Community rating

My school is ok, it is not the greatest...

See this school's attendance zone

How would you rate your experience at this school?

Submitted by a student June 05, 2014

Submitted by a parent September 23, 2013

Submitted by a community member September 10, 2013

Submitted by a student January 18, 2013

Any price 0 - $100,000 100,000 - 200,000 200,000 - 300,000 300,000 - 500,000 500,000 - 1,000,000 1,000,000+

0 beds 1 bed 2 beds 3 beds 4 beds

Stepping Stones School

Tampa, FL

|

Private

|

9-12

Wharton High School

Tampa, FL

|

Public district

|

9-12

Huntington Learning Center

Tampa, FL

|

Private

|

K-12

American Youth Academy

Tampa, FL

|

Private

|

PK-12

Academy At The Lakes

Land O' Lakes, FL

|

Private

|

PK-12

Last modified: November 3, 2014

Our mission is to help millions of parents get a great education for their kids. GreatSchools.org is an independent nonprofit and the leading national source of school information for families.

GreatSchools.org 1999 Harrison Street, Suite 1100, Oakland, CA 94612

1998-2016 GreatSchools.org All Rights Reserved. GreatSchools is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization | Ad Choices

Last modified November 3, 2014 Freedom High School is a Public school that serves grades 9-12. It has received a GreatSchools rating of 6 out of 10 based on academic quality.

View post:
Freedom High School - Tampa, Florida - FL - School overview

Welcome to the Orlando Freedom - a rich and unique experiece for the youth of Orlando. Dedicated to building the future of our kids by promoting the values of friendship, teamwork, hard work and dedication through the beautiful game of soccer.

With soccer as a cornerstone, our players and students learn the great life skills needed for success - loyalty, cooperation, initiative, poise and confidence. We build citizens and patriots while THEY HAVE FUN!!!!!!

For all boys and girls from ages 2 to 18 we have a program to fit every skill level, every age, and every level of competition.

Our professional coaching staff, led by President Jim Hansen, is trained not only in soccer but in educational development, and has only one goal in mind - the success of our players and student.

For boys and girls age 2-5 our Lil' Patriots Soccer School gets the kids off on the right foot. With classes taught right in local pre-schools and kindergartens or at a local field for stay at home pre-school kids, it's just the right combination of games, stories, and fun to grab the interest and love of your little one.

For players from 6-9 years old, or graduates of the Lil' Patriots Soccer School, The Patriot Soccer Academy is the place to be! We build teams of 5-6 players to play in our own recreational league, and in select 3v3 tournaments around the Orlando area.

For the more advanced players ages 8-18, we build traveling teams that play in competitive and advanced recreational leagues and tournaments all around Central Florida. We also provide private skill training.

Home

The Orlando Freedom Soccer Club

The Orlando Freedom Patriot Academy

The Orlando Freedom 'Lil Patriots Soccer School

Registration and Contacts

Links

About Us

Teams and Upcoming Events

Click on the upcoming events button for information regarding our 2016 Summer Camp, and openings on our U9, U11, U12Academy teams and on our National Champion U11 Girls team.

See the article here:
Orlando Freedom

Freedom AMERICA Inc. | Call us at 813-600-5314 (Brandon, FL), 863-682-6381 (Lakeland, FL)

We understand how important it is for you to be able to trust your advisor, particularly in the wake of recent highly publicized corporate failures and investment management misdeeds. Regardless of the direction the stock market and interest rates it's important to have a trusted advisor to look after your best interests. That trusted advisor is Jonathan Jackson. He isexperienced, responsive and understands your need for integrity and transparency.

RETIREMENT PLANNING: People can no longer rely on Social Security to cover all their retirement needs. Individuals are living longer, health costs are rising, non-traditional retirement plans are being eliminated and the cost of living is constantly increasing. Freedom America Inc. can help you start planning today to safeguard your future retirement needs. At Freedom America Inc., our advisors are thoroughly trained to help our clients avoid unnecessary risks during or before their retirement years. We will help you protect your hard-earned retirement assets in diverse markets and provide you with the lifetime income you will need (while potentially reducing your tax liabilities).

Our goal is to help you not worry about your money while you try to experience complete enjoyment during your retirement years. To schedule a FREE no-obligation consultation, please call us at: 813-600-5314 (Brandon office) 863-682-6381 (Lakeland office)

Double Click Logos To View Profiles

Jonathan Jackson, president of Freedom America Inc. was recently featured on RETIREMENT NEWS TODAY. Click the videos tab to view these informative videos.

TAX PLANNING

Protecting What's Important to You

Contact Us To Attend One Of Our Informative Workshops

For a married couple, the difference between a good Social Security election decision and a poor one is often well over $100,000! What's At Stake For You?

To Be On The List For Tax Preparation, Please CLICK HERE

See the rest here:
Freedom America, Inc.

The purpose of the Freedom N.Y. Newsletter is to communicate to the world the FACTS about the injustices that were handed to the company. Freedom N.Y., Inc. a Bronx N.Y. based Defense Prime Meals Ready To Eat (MRE) Contractor that thrived in the 1980s. For over the past two decades, Freedom has fought to unbury itself from the lies and deceptions used illegally to halt its production lines of MREs (the sort of meals now being fed to our troops in Iraq). Freedom's contract was breached 26 times and, as a result of these wrongful breaches of contract, lost its MRE Industrial Preparedness Prime contractor position within the Department of Defense. Additionally, Freedom has lost over 442 jobs as well as a massive 400,000 sq ft U.S.D.A. approved plant in the South Bronx of N.Y.

Freedom has been involved in a court battle for some time to set the record straight about what happened. This website will reveal the factual events that took place during the contract period. And will include recent court findings, ruling and decisions that confirmed what Freedom said happened over 17 years ago.

Go here to see the original:
Freedom N.Y., Inc.

Latest From Our Contributors Book Review: An Enjoyable Guide to Economics by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 2016

Popular Economics: What the Rolling Stones, Downton Abbey, and LeBron James Can Teach You about Economics by John Tamny (Washington, D.C.: Regnery ...

The December 2013 Future of Freedom contained my article A Supreme Rebuff for USDAs Ruinous Raisin Regime. The legal case surrounding that controversy kept ...

I am writing to seek your financial support to help us continue the battle for liberty ...

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.George Santayana,The Life of Reason, Vol. 1 In Harold Ramis classic 1993 comedyGroundhog Day, TV ...

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard M. Ebeling discuss the hot topics of the day. This week, ...

The year that is just closing, 2015, has been full of events that continue to dominate the news, including renewed racial tensions on the ...

The essence of libertarianism is that a person should be free to live his life in any manner he chooses as long as his ...

No popular posts right now.

Founded in 1989, The Future of Freedom Foundation is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational foundation whose mission is to present an uncompromising moral, philosophical, and economic case for the free society.

We hold that the welfare-state, warfare-state way of life that has come to characterize our nation violates not only the founding principles of the United States, as reflected by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but also the fundamental principles of freedom.

Our methodology revolves around the spreading of ideas on liberty, which we believe is the best way to restore a free, prosperous, and harmonious society to our land. We invite you to explore freedom with us and to support our efforts to advance the principles of freedom.

Read more about The Future of Freedom Foundation

See the rest here:
Home - The Future of Freedom Foundation

Yesterday I posted some thoughts about Purdue Universitys decision to destroy a video recording of my keynote address at its Dawn or Doom colloquium. The organizers had gone dark, and a promised public link was not forthcoming. After a couple of weeks of hoping to resolve the matter quietly, I did some digging and decided to write up what I learned. I posted on the web site of the Century Foundation, my main professional home:

It turns out that Purdue has wiped all copies of my video and slides from university servers, on grounds that I displayed classified documents briefly on screen. A breach report was filed with the universitys Research Information Assurance Officer, also known as the Site Security Officer, under the terms of Defense Department Operating Manual 5220.22-M. I am told that Purdue briefly considered, among other things, whether to destroy the projector I borrowed, lest contaminants remain.

I was, perhaps, naive, but pretty much all of that came as a real surprise.

Lets rewind. Information Assurance? Site Security?

These are familiar terms elsewhere, but new to me in a university context. I learned that Purdue, like a number of its peers, has a facility security clearance to perform classified U.S. government research. The manual of regulations runs to 141 pages. (Its terms forbid uncleared trustees to ask about the work underway on their campus, but thats a subject for another day.) The pertinent provision here, spelled out at length in a manual called Classified Information Spillage, requires sanitization, physical removal, or destruction of classified information discovered on unauthorized media.

Two things happened in rapid sequence around the time I told Purdue about my post.

First, the university broke a week-long silence and expressed a measure of regret:

UPDATE: Just after posting this item I received an email from Julie Rosa, who heads strategic communications for Purdue. She confirmed that Purdue wiped my video after consulting the Defense Security Service, but the university now believes it went too far.

In an overreaction while attempting to comply with regulations, the video was ordered to be deleted instead of just blocking the piece of information in question. Just FYI: The conference organizers were not even aware that any of this had happened until well after the video was already gone.

Im told we are attempting to recover the video, but I have not heard yet whether that is going to be possible. When I find out, I will let you know and we will, of course, provide a copy to you.

Then Edward Snowden tweeted the link, and the Century Foundations web site melted down. It now redirects to Medium, where you can find the full story.

I have not heard back from Purdue today about recovery of the video. It is not clear to me how recovery is even possible, if Purdue followed Pentagon guidelines for secure destruction. Moreover, although the university seems to suggest it could have posted most of the video, it does not promise to do so now. Most importantly, the best that I can hope for here is that my remarks and slides will be made available in redacted form with classified images removed, and some of my central points therefore missing. There would be one version of the talk for the few hundred people who were in the room on Sept. 24, and for however many watched the live stream, and another version left as the only record.

For our purposes here, the most notable questions have to do with academic freedom in the context of national security. How did a university come to sanitize a public lecture it had solicited, on the subject of NSA surveillance, from an author known to possess the Snowden documents? How could it profess to be shocked to find that spillage is going on at such a talk? The beginning of an answer came, I now see, in the question and answer period after my Purdue remarks. A post-doctoral research engineer stood up to ask whether the documents I had put on display were unclassified. No, I replied. Theyre classified still. Eugene Spafford, a professor of computer science there, later attributed that concern to junior security rangers on the faculty and staff. But the display of Top Secret material, he said, once noted, is something that cannot be unnoted.

Someone reported my answer to Purdues Research Information Assurance Officer, who reported in turn to Purdues representative at the Defense Security Service. By the terms of its Pentagon agreement, Purdue decided it was now obliged to wipe the video of my talk in its entirety. I regard this as a rather devout reading of the rules, which allowed Purdue to realistically consider the potential harm that may result from compromise of spilled information. The slides I showed had been viewed already by millions of people online. Even so, federal funding might be at stake for Purdue, and the notoriously vague terms of the Espionage Act hung over the decision. For most lawyers, abundance of caution would be the default choice. Certainly that kind of thinking is commonplace, and sometimes appropriate, in military and intelligence services.

But universities are not secret agencies. They cannot lightly wear the shackles of a National Industrial Security Program, as Purdue agreed to do. The values at their core, in principle and often in practice, are open inquiry and expression.

I do not claim I suffered any great harm when Purdue purged my remarks from its conference proceedings. I do not lack for publishers or public forums. But the next person whose talk is disappeared may have fewer resources.

More importantly, to my mind, Purdue has compromised its own independence and that of its students and faculty. It set an unhappy precedent, even if the people responsible thought they were merely following routine procedures.

One can criticize the university for its choices, and quite a few have since I published my post. What interests me is how nearly the results were foreordained once Purdue made itself eligible for Top Secret work.

Think of it as a classic case of mission creep. Purdue invited the secret-keepers of the Defense Security Service into one cloistered corner of campus (a small but significant fraction of research in certain fields, as the university counsel put it). The trustees accepted what may have seemed a limited burden, confined to the precincts of classified research.

Now the security apparatus claims jurisdiction over the campus (facility) at large. The university finds itself sanitizing a conference that has nothing to do with any government contract.

I am glad to see that Princeton takes the view that [s]ecurity regulations and classification of information are at variance with the basic objectives of a University. It does not permit faculty members to do classified work on campus, which avoids Purdues facility problem. And even so, at Princeton and elsewhere, there may be an undercurrent of self-censorship and informal restraint against the use of documents derived from unauthorized leaks.

Two of my best students nearly dropped a course I taught a few years back, called Secrecy, Accountability and the National Security State, when they learned the syllabus would include documents from Wikileaks. Both had security clearances, for summer jobs, and feared losing them. I told them I would put the documents on Blackboard, so they need not visit the Wikileaks site itself, but the readings were mandatory. Both, to their credit, stayed in the course. They did so against the advice of some of their mentors, including faculty members. The advice was purely practical. The U.S. government will not give a clear answer when asked whether this sort of exposure to published secrets will harm job prospects or future security clearances. Why take the risk?

Every student and scholar must decide for him- or herself, but I think universities should push back harder, and perhaps in concert. There is a treasure trove of primary documents in the archives made available by Snowden and Chelsea Manning. The government may wish otherwise, but that information is irretrievably in the public domain. Should a faculty member ignore the Snowden documents when designing a course on network security architecture? Should a student write a dissertation on modern U.S.-Saudi relations without consulting the numerous diplomatic cables on Wikileaks? To me, those would be abdications of the basic duty to seek out authoritative sources of knowledge, wherever they reside.

I would be interested to learn how others have grappled with these questions. I expect to write about them in my forthcoming book on surveillance, privacy and secrecy.

See more here:
Freedom to Tinker Research and expert commentary on ...