Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” This mantra has led to many states and the federal government instituting freedom of information and sunshine laws to open up government and public institutions.  Recent controversies have brought this subject to the forefront of public conversation from Hillary Clinton’s personal email server to University of Texas Regent Wallace Hall‘s requests to University of Illinois officials using private email addresses for public business.  I do believe there is a larger question that we should be considering here. Should the public have access to all information from public university administrators and faculty? Should there be complete transparency regarding decisions and correspondence conducted by public university employees? Ultimately, have we gone too far with freedom of information in higher education?

Clearly, public officials including public university administrators and faculty should not be trying to intentionally circumvent freedom of information laws.  I suspect many do this and it is wrong.

However, we should pause and think about if such laws make sense and under what circumstances.

Should a public university president be able to receive guidance on an issue from senior administrators and faculty without concerns of the public release of the advice?

Should a faculty member’s email regarding a research project be released to the public?

Should an administrative assistant’s salary be released and posted online for anyone to see?

I understand and support the notion of public accountability and transparency. Yet, I believe we also must be concerned about the chilling effect such releases have on the work and morale of public universities.

There are many benefits to releasing information, correspondence, and data from public universities. For example, much of what we know about athletics expenditures comes from the release of data that would not occur without freedom of information laws.

This is a good thing.

But, we also must acknowledge that some information requests are based on a desire to gain an advantage, embarrass, or the voyeuristic tendencies among the public and media.

Just because I disagree with the research conducted by a faculty member, I should not be able to request the person’s email. We have seen this happen too many times. The same goes with disagreements over a president’s decision or policy. Over and over again, public institutions are forced to release information that is less about the public interest and more about personal agendas.

These kinds of requests are not in the public interest and, in my view, should not be allowed.

I’m not sure how to address this problem, but, as I’ve alluded, I think the standard should be public interest.

I don’t think it is in the public interest to be able to see the salary of an administrative assistant making $23,000 a year. I don’t care that the salary comes from public monies, there is no reasonable public need for that information to be released. However, I can see value and a need for transparency in wanting to know how much a president makes, a football coach, or even any employee making over $100,000.

Likewise, I would like to see some allowance for work product or something akin to executive privilege that allows the President to limit access to information. Within reason, faculty and administrators should be able to do their work without fear that every little detail could be released at nearly any time.  Without doubt, there are times that such fear is probably healthy and information should be released. But a blanket open requests seems too far to me and could severely limit the important missions of the university.

Of course, the challenge is how do you operationalize safeguards that protect the public’s need for information and university officials need to openly do their work. How do you allow important and needed requests, but prevent public universities from having to deal with requests that should not be allowed. I don’t think you can trust institutions to do this themselves. Maybe some type of ombudsman or state agency?

I don’t know the answer, but I am quite concerned. What started out as an important policy objective in a democracy has given rise to a number of unintended consequences. I have to wonder if we’ve gone too far with freedom of information in higher education.