Sunshine scares academic-labor complex

The requests have come from the Landmark Legal Foundation, which is a critic of organized labor. Landmark's complaints have sought detailed information about the activities of the labor centers, and suggested that they should be eliminated for not advancing a "public purpose," charging that these centers are simply about promoting a "particular political ideology."

In the last few years the Landmark Legal Foundation has lodged public records requests of and complaints in regard to labor education centers in at least eleven public universities and colleges, including Florida International University, Indiana University, UCLA, UC Berkeley, the Universities of Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts-Amherst, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and the Evergreen State College. Thus far, to our knowledge the most serious complaints, which threaten academic freedom, appear to have taken place at UC Berkeley and Evergreen, where the foundation seeks to restrict the work of the centers, in terms of who they serve and what they do. At Berkeley, Landmark's complaint alleged, among other charges, that the Labor Center provides services for private (union) benefit rather than for public benefit. At Evergreen, Landmark made a request for a state audit of the Labor Center, charging that this program "is in violation of Washington's requirement that public funds must only be used for a valid public purpose." The letter from Landmark went on to say that "Rather than a valid public purpose, the Center's activities are designed to promote a particular political ideology."

However, at Evergreen, despite the fact that the state auditor gave the college significant flexibility in how to handle the audit request, college administrators went forward with a review - conducted by the college's internal auditor - that raised questions about the ethics of providing educational services to unions and community groups (for example, of immigrant communities), and of being involved in any work that could be seen as opposing the work of federal agencies (in this case, for example, Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Those questions mirrored charges made by Landmark that "the Center's focus appears to be increasingly directed toward thwarting federal and state law enforcement efforts to combat illegal immigration in Washington . . . . The use of public funds to undermine federal and local law enforcement in the performance of their duties is not a valid public purpose."