Possibly the media could see the story better if it was not sitting so close?
The following is a refresher on the use of open records laws to see how officials at state universities use their positions. This practice, although expressly provided for under various state statutes, was pioneered in some respects by “climate” activists. Then others flattered the greens with imitation. Now, every few years the same players recycle their outrage that those others dare ask questions inconvenient to the activists’ agenda.
In recent years, these requests have confirmed how a network of academics have used their positions with public institutions to advance certain legal and policy outcomes. These outcomes are almost universally on one side of the ideological spectrum, in particular favoring the climate agenda of encouraging lawsuits against energy companies over climate change seeking a “sustainable funding stream” (and even enlisting law enforcement in that pursuit). These academics have more recently added to this repertoire by promoting a “climate superfund” energy tax as a Plan B or C.
This work was initially documented by public records productions from institutions other than the academics’ universities of employment. GAO knows that advocates are going to advocate; and everything these faculty are doing may well be entirely within their rights including as public employees. But precisely because the academics engage in this sort of lobbying in the capacity of and promoting their positions as public employees, the rest of us have a right to see the receipts under state transparency laws.
Since someone has to do it, let’s explore this phenomenon of academics turning up in document productions from state attorneys general offices.
First, we would be remiss to not tip our cap to the original inspiration for such records requests about the activities of academics. The public record is quite clear that the FOIA requests sent years ago to the University of Virginia seeking records of the (now recently sanctioned) star of ClimateGate simply mimicked Greenpeace, which had similarly submitted requests covering two UVA professors *who the climate activists didn’t like*, Profs. Fred Singer and Pat Michaels. Those requests were good. FOIA good. Noble. Virtuous… NYT use FOIA!
Wait, no! FOIA Bad!! Harassment! Upon realizing that laws are for everyone, these requests became “conservative FOIA-based attacks.”
Later, again surely by chance, the Greenpeace staff FOIAing Prof. Singer’s and Prof. Michaels’ emails turned up in AG records as well. Including, it says here, helping coordinate hits on ideological opponents—even in the NYT—which the activists’ benefactors then forwarded to law enforcement while also bringing the requesters in to brief AG staff (at minimum, the New York AG). So, recall that that’s how this operation rolls.
Possibly the media could see the story better if it was not sitting so close?
What about the UCLA PRA requests that exposed the role of an academic serving the climate plaintiffs’ litigation campaign, also circling in the same orbit with the AG-friendly benefactors? That law faculty’s participation in the climate industry had only turned up thanks to a Vermont AG release of records, specifically in an agenda for what emails called “the secret meeting at Harvard” for attorneys general and “prospective funders.” One of UCLA’s participating faculty described this effort to another donor as being about “going after climate denialists with a bunch of prosecutors.” Nice.
Weaponization of government is extraordinarily abusive, and increasingly common. Yet these machinations were of no interest to the media. It’s almost as if there is a need to avert their gaze, whether due to the norm-busting, appalling grubbiness of these tactics, or an insistence on a ham-fisted double-standard employed depending on who is using transparency laws designed for everyone.
What about the University of Minnesota law professor who put a memo ghost-drafted with the “lawyers advising Rockefeller family fund” on University letterhead and sought (successfully) to convince Minnesota AG Keith Ellison to file a “climate” lawsuit against private parties? Well, the requests to the AG’s office and, ultimately the University, that produced this information came about thanks to a cutout boasting about his role.
This brings us to some FOIA requests to the University of Michigan. These pertain to the Michigan law professor who now says she actually created “Climate Superfund” legislation and performed her advocacy for the AG-canoodling outside benefactor, not the school, silly, cueing the now-ritual argument that records addressing faculty’s work are actually personal if it involves policy or legal advocacy or activism. That’s the claim in this case even though the Prof. and the University regularly promote the “climate superfund” work and use it as a focus of her scholarship, in papers, videos, interviews, letterhead-memos, and testimony styled as that of a UMich faculty member.
Again, this inquiry was prompted by records obtained from a law enforcement office, specifically a California AG document production, to which an advocacy group had forwarded a memo by the professor setting forth her research and arguments for creating such a program.
This routine by the climate industry is even more incoherent than it looks. When academics at the center of ClimateGate insisted that what was then quite possibly science’s biggest scandal ever—until COVID prompted them to open the kimono for all to see—was really just statements made out of context and if only you knew the context you would know this is not what it looks like… they didn’t mean it. When parties then invoked public records laws to say, ok, let’s see the context, it was met with shrieks of “harassing academics!” What appeared to be an enormous scandal was to be ignored, and all stops pulled out to wave it away, and to send messages that opposition will not be treated gently.
This pattern of selective embrace of transparency and selective outrage seems to be repeating itself. It is as if climate activism, including in the media, can cause a certain amnesia or else a vast blind spot. The problem, in certain well-heeled circles, is with *everyone* having access to open records laws, not just green groups and legacy media but also the wrong sort of people. Their problem is with the law, the very law they view as wonderful when they are the only ones using it.