Cuccinelli, UVa and Academic Freedom

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, since taking office in January, has certainly been busy, thrusting himself and his office into the national spotlight.

When the Environmental Protection Agency declared global warming (or, if you will, “climate change”) to be an environmental threat and asserted its right to regulate carbon as a greenhouse gas, Cuccinelli filed suit to challenge the agency’s move.

Within a couple of days of the passage of health care reform, Virginia’s top lawyer marched down the street to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, filing suit to challenge the constitutionality of the legislation.

Now, he’s taken on the University of Virginia, the state’s flagship college, in a battle that puts academic freedom squarely in the political crosshairs.

At the center of the fight is former UVa environmental professor Michael Mann, now on the faculty of Penn State. When he was on the UVa faculty from 1999 until 2005, he made a name for himself in climate research, assembling data that purported to show a dramatic spike in Earth’s temperatures in recent decades.

It’s that research that’s drawn Cuccinelli’s attention, especially after hackers broke into the e-mail cache of a British university and uncovered what they believe is evidence warming scientists basically cooked the numbers to support the premise that the planet is warming.

And that’s where Mann and UVa come into play, as Mann’s study is one of those mentioned in the hacked e-mails.

During his time at UVa, Mann received almost $500,000 in five research grants, four of which were from the federal government. That fact provided Cuccinelli the legal hook on which to hang a series of civil investigative demands (the civil court version of a subpoena) in an investigation of Mann under Virginia’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act.

He’s demanded UVa turn over thousands of documents — more than 11 years worth of information — ranging from e-mails, letters, research notes and inter-office memos.

Last week, the UVa Board of Visitors, led by Rector John O. Wynne and President John Casteen, filed papers in Albemarle County Circuit Court, petitioning a judge to quash the CIDs as over-reach of the attorney general’s powers and a threat to academic freedom.

Here’s how the university’s lawyers put it:

“As Thomas Jefferson intended the University of Virginia has a long and proud tradition of embracing the ‘illimitable freedom of the human mind’ by fully endorsing and supporting faculty research and scholarly pursuits.”

Wynne, speaking for the university, said the Board of Visitors had decided to fight — and to fight strongly — for the right of its research faculty to delve into topics, engage in debate and free expression without fear of political or academic reprisals. “We are fighting for preservation of the basic principles on which our country was founded,” he said in a statement released to the media last week.

One of the nation’s largest law firms, Hogan Lovells, is representing the university, on a reduced-cost basis. And premier groups such as the American Association of University Professors and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have lined up in UVa’s corner.

They know what’s at stake: free scientific research as the fundamental mission of a research university. If a politician who disagrees with the outcomes of research into any particular topic or who disagrees with the fundamental research premise itself can launch a “fraud” investigation against the “offending” scientist, then a chilling message is sent through the academic community.

A message that says “Don’t venture down this path of inquiry or you’ll pay with your reputation and career.” And that’s wrong.

We’ve been supportive of the attorney general’s effort to determine the constitutionality of health care reform, most importantly Congress’ imposition of the individual mandate for the purchase of health care insurance. Regardless of one’s politics, the legality of that key component of the legislation needs to be determined.

But in his environmental jihad against UVa and its former faculty member, the attorney general has ventured into an area where no politician — liberal or conservative — should tread. Thrusting partisan politics into academics is wrong.

Back off, Mr. Attorney General.