Efforts to measure the mood of Saint Louis University’s faculty members might in fact have worsened it, as the administration has threatened a faculty leader with a copyright lawsuit if he circulates his own version of a survey about the campus climate.
The dispute stems from faculty members’ dissatisfaction with climate surveys that the Saint Louis University Board of Trustees sent out last month to faculty members, students, and staff members. Although the board had the surveys developed in response to no-confidence votes taken by faculty members and students against the Roman Catholic university’s president, the Rev. Lawrence Biondi, just one of the 23 questions on the surveys asks specifically about him.
Most of the questions—posed as statements to which survey respondents are instructed to express their levels of agreement or disagreement—gauge attitudes toward the institution in general.
The Saint Louis University chapter of the American Association of University Professors responded to the board’s surveys by attempting to devise its own “AAUP Supplemental Survey” for faculty members that would include specific questions about Father Biondi. Where the university’s survey for faculty members asked how much they agreed or disagreed with the statement “The university appreciates the contributions of the faculty,” the AAUP survey would, for example, ask how much respondents agreed with the statement “The president appears to respect and value the faculty.”
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on March 27 mentioned the AAUP chapter’s plan for a survey. The next day the chapter’s president, Steven G. Harris, a professor of mathematics and computer science, received a letter from William R. Kauffman, the university’s vice president and general counsel, telling him that the university’s new surveys are copyrighted and any use of them would violate federal law.
Mr. Kauffman’s letter said that anything derived from the university’s surveys would likewise be regarded as a violation of the university’s rights. “Any infringement,” the letter said, “will be addressed by the university and could result in legal action” in which the university could seek injunctive relief, damages, and the recovery of any legal fees.
Mr. Harris has responded to the letter by sending complaints to the AAUP’s national office and to the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri. His letter to the local ACLU chapter said Mr. Kauffman had met with him personally, denied being under instructions to file a lawsuit if the faculty survey were distributed, and characterized the letter as merely advice. Nevertheless, Mr. Harris said, he regarded the lawyer’s letter as intimidating and an “attempt at suppression of free speech.”
‘Climate of Intimidation’
B. Robert Kreiser, an associate secretary of the national AAUP in the department of academic freedom, tenure, and governance, said the university lawyer’s letter “borders on unconscionable” and “certainly supports the complaint that there is a climate of intimidation at the university.”
“I find it remarkable,” Mr. Kreiser said on Tuesday, “that the administration would invoke copyright as the basis for challenging the right of the chapter to conduct an evaluation of the president or the administration of Saint Louis University generally.”
The local ACLU chapter has not responded to Mr. Harris’s complaint.
Clayton Berry, a spokesman for Saint Louis University, said on Tuesday that the institution had no comment on its lawyer’s letter to Mr. Harris. In a statement issued to the news media on March 26, the university said students and faculty and staff members had been involved in devising its confidential surveys, which is being administered by Psychological Associates, a local human-resource development firm.
The statement said the university’s Board of Trustees voted in December to have such surveys conducted annually by an external organization, but the first attempt “is more limited than what is expected in future years” because it is being conducted on a tight timeline.
“The survey seeks to provide the university’s Board of Trustees with a broad overview of three primary areas of interest and concern that have been expressed: communication, climate, and voice (the ability to make suggestions for change),” the university’s statement read.
Mr. Harris said on Tuesday that he and other members of the AAUP chapter were discussing how to proceed. He said he was not sure whether he would go ahead with the survey even if his own lawyer assured him that he could not be successfully sued for copyright violations.
“The issue,” he said, “is not whether the university will prevail in such a suit but whether I would be forced to run up enormous legal bills to defend against such a suit.”
The university is no stranger to invoking copyright law in a dispute with a faculty critic. In 2007 it filed a copyright lawsuit against Avis Meyer, a professor of communications and a journalism adviser, following a fight between the university’s administration and students over control of the student newspaper.
The lawsuit accused Mr. Meyer of copyright or trademark infringement for having established a nonprofit organization with the same name as the student newspaper, The University News, in case students there decided to break away from institutional control and publish off campus. A federal judge dismissed the copyright- and trademark-violation accusations, but Mr. Meyer said on Tuesday that he ended up incurring more than $100,000 in legal bills.
