I am an environmental studies professor at Brown University and lead the Climate and Development lab, a student and faculty research organization that has recently been researching opponents of off-shore wind farms. This August, Brown University’s general counsel received a letter from Marzulla Law L.L.C., a law firm that has been representing groups that oppose offshore wind farms, demanding that the university retract our research that linked the fossil fuel industry to the groups this law firm represents.
While I had received similarly threatening letters from law firms representing these anti-wind groups in the past, this one was different. This one threatened Brown University’s funding, and threatened to complain to federal funders, specifically the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. Universities across the country, including Brown, have had to make deals with the federal government over federal funding in the last few months. This threat to bring in the Trump administration if the university did not retract our research was a bald attempt to bully me and my colleagues and chill academic speech.
A spokesperson for Brown commented that, “One principle that is core to research at Brown is the ability for scholars to discuss contested topics and themes and to have those topics openly debated” and that “Scholars shape their own research and course of instruction at Brown.” People have really admired that response, and I’m grateful that the university has my back, but really, isn’t a university supposed to stand up for academic freedom? What’s really worrisome is that this incident is not isolated — it is indicative of our current political and social moment. And we don’t hear about it more often because people and universities are afraid to speak out.
Amid these consistent threats to academic freedom, we as researchers must stand up and communicate the importance of our work. Now, more than ever, we need to be brave and tell our stories so that other researchers can have the courage to defend their own work from politically motivated attacks.
