I'm not sure I want the UI getting in the middle of a Presidential election. Why would they be unwilling to release records like this? Isn't that the whole point of having them at a public institution? Is there a harmless explanation I'm missing?
In the process of tracing down the Obama-Ayers connection, I located a large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library of the University of Illinois at Chicago. These documents are the internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a small foundation, founded and inspired by Bill Ayers, for which Obama served as board chairman (almost surely at Ayers’s behest). Although the library initially promised me access to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, top library officials mysteriously intervened at the last minute to bar access. There followed a struggle between myself and library officials over my right to examine the documents....
I need public help to gain access to this critically important repository of information... Please consider contacting the president of the University of Illinois system, B. Joseph White, to ask him to take immediate public steps to insure the safety of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, to release the identity of the collection’s donor, and above all to swiftly make the collection available to me, and to the public at large. You can find an e-mail link for White here. Telephone, fax, and mailing addresses for White’s offices can be found here .
Of course, this is related to a larger problem surrounding Obama:
Just to review, the public cannot get access to paperwork related grants distributed by then-state-legislator Obama (records from 1997 to 2000 aren't available); his state legislative office records (which he says may have been thrown out); he refuses to release a specific list of law clients, instead giving a list of all of his firm's clients, numbering several hundred each year; he won't release his application to the state bar (where critics wonder if he lied in responding to questions about parking tickets and past drug use); he’s never released any legal or billing records to verify that he only did a few hours of work for a nonprofit tied to convicted donor Rezko; and he's never released any medical records, just a one-page letter from his doctor...
The new politics looks an awfully lot like the old politics, doesn't it?
UPDATE: More here. This is not the sort of attention I want the UI to get. Why not just release the documents?
There are a number of restrictions that can be placed by the donor on document donations to an archive. This is frequently the case with regard to document collections that involve those still living and/or active in public life. The archivist should be able to cite this authority for you in denying your request. Did they do so? If not, then it would be more productive to look into that first. Nothing particularly sinister about it, presuming that's the case here.
Unless there is something in such records that requires public disclosure, then there is no legal basis to dispute donor restrictions. Any good archivist will enforce donor restrictions, otherwise future donors are likely to find some other place to donate their records who will maintain such restrictions.
BTW, if you want to worry about such things, it would be effort exerted much more tellingly to pressure Presidential archives to release more of their holdings. While there are funding issues that account for part of this, it's also clear that there is much more CYA going on, even decades later and where there seems to be little at stake other than presidential image.
Of course, if the objective of such concern about these particualr documents is to prevent Obama from getting into a position where he does generate presidential documents, it would be less partisan and more philosophical about the more general need for openess and transparency in public records to argue for better openess with regard to public records as opposed to private record donations which are subject to whatever restrictiosn a donor may place on them. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to matter what a president's political affliation might be, they tend to engage in far too much secrecy and not nearly enough unvarnished truth. You can read backwards through Bush II, Clinton, Bush I, and Reagan, etc and see that this sort of [problem has much less to do with a specific persinality than with the terrain of the office and Americans' willinginess to let politicians get away with such chicanery.
"There are a number of restrictions that can be placed by the donor on document donations to an archive. This is frequently the case with regard to document collections that involve those still living and/or active in public life. The archivist should be able to cite this authority for you in denying your request. Did they do so? If not, then it would be more productive to look into that first. Nothing particularly sinister about it, presuming that's the case here."
OK - all I know is what the Corner at NRO posted, and they're obviously not unbiased, which I why I asked if there was some harmless explanation. I wonder if anyone has released the denial letter?
Thank you for the explanation, BTW.
"BTW, if you want to worry about such things, it would be effort exerted much more tellingly to pressure Presidential archives to release more of their holdings. While there are funding issues that account for part of this, it's also clear that there is much more CYA going on, even decades later and where there seems to be little at stake other than presidential image."
Yes. Obama was very critical of Clinton for this very thing during the Primaries. Which makes his habit of record denials (even without considering the one being discussed here) all the more hypocritical.
It's a little ironic that Bill Ayers founded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, presumably funded by the Annenberg Foundation, and named for its benefactor, the late Ambassador Walter Annenberg. Annenberg was pretty much the political opposite of Ayers, and was a big funder of the Nixon campaign, eventually going on to being named ambassador to Britain by Nixon. I believe that his wife was also the Chief of Protocol (i.e. organizer of state dinners) for Ronald Reagan.
The UIC library shouldn't be withholding access to anything in its library to legitimate researchers, including members of the press - no matter how much they or anyone else may not like the National Review. I'm not sure if there's really a public right to a lawyer's list of clients or application for the state bar. As for his medical records, it was a pretty clever political ploy - hundreds of pages of medical records for McCain, covering only a few years, vs. a one page note from Obama's doctor saying that he's fit - just brilliant. It's not like Obama's health is really an issue - the guy is young, fit, eats well, and even looks good with his shirt off. By demanding his medical records, the GOP only calls more attention to the fact that their guy is older, sicker, and uglier.
D-Man--beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
More:
I wonder who the donor is?
It made the Trib too: http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/08/barack_obama_records_sealed_at.html
discussed on WLS this morning in detail
"The UIC library shouldn't be withholding access to anything in its library to legitimate researchers, including members of the press - no matter how much they or anyone else may not like the National Review."
Uh...there are many restrictions regarding library items. Not any yahoo off the street with a press pass printed off the internet can go wandering through the stacks. I can't go take stuff out of the rare books collections. And I can't take fragile, ancient artifacts out of curation over at Spurlock Museum.
Just because a state institution is *housing* materials doesn't mean they actually *own* the materials. With more and more departments looking to the private sector for funding and resources, public access to those materials are going to be less and less available.
Looks like that's the case here---UIC is holding privately-owned materials and the owner is restricting who can and cannot access their property. And with the state's budget looking like it's going to get worse this year for higher education, don't expect this to get better anytime soon.
I think the problem is that the U of I has changed their position on this several times. For example, if you read the article by the reporter who requested the documents, he was given several different answers by several different people. First, they said that he could have them. Then they said that they hadn't been released, but would do so shortly and then he could have them. Then they said that the documents contained information labeled privileged by the donor (although there were only 4 such files out of many hundreds). Then they said that they didn't have permission or an agreement with the donor.
Given the fact that most librarians are huge supporters of the First Amendment and the public's right to know, what is going on here? As an alum of the University, it troubles me that they may be trying to avoid releasing information.
I think in light of the history of the request and the University's response, we are owed a better explanation. Maybe the University is on legal ground here, but it certainly doesn't look good. ARe they waiting on an agreement from Obama, Ayers, the Annenberg Foundation, or some combination of those?
The Trib quoted someone from the U of I this morning stating that whoever donated the documents has not released them for public use.
Essentially, the U of I has nothing to do with this other than being the organization holding the private records.
Now if only the mud-seeking conservative media would print the whole story (that this is out of the U of I's control) and not just the bits that make innocent groups look bad.... ;)
PS Champaign Dweller, none of those four items you posted are mutually exclusive. If the donor has placed a restriction on the documents, than the reporter in question can not have the documents...
It's like saying the sky is blue and then saying the sky is clear. Different ways of saying the same thing.
Not any yahoo off the street with a press pass printed off the internet can go wandering through the stacks. I can't go take stuff out of the rare books collections. And I can't take fragile, ancient artifacts out of curation over at Spurlock Museum.
I'm assuming that Stanley Kurtz didn't get his press pass printed off the internet, since he does work for a national publication that has been around for several decades. He's also not trying to take material out of the rare books collection - there is no chance that these are centuries-old records that will disintegrate in the hands of someone that doesn't know how to handle them. Nor are they "ancient artifacts" in a museum, they are contemporary records. If they are donated with restrictions, or just held with restrictions, that's fine, as far as library policy is concerned. But it's not really about library policy, it's about politics, just as everyone's med records are confidential except for people running for president.
My point is there are *many* restrictions regarding access to libraries and collections at state institutions.
You can't necessarily go wandering through the stacks, but I assume that the U of I is subject to the State's FOIA--I wonder which exemption applies, if any. REgardless of whether someone wants information kept confidential, if you give information to a state entity, it's subject to the FOIA, unless it's exempt. Otherwise, plenty of people, including the government, could get around FOIA simply by stating that the donating party didn't want it made public. If it doesn't belong to the U of I, then what's it doing in U of I's custody?
Any librarians out there who could shed some light on this?
Rob-N, I may be wrong on this. However, why is the U of I changing it's story? they went through a lot of excuses before they finally settled on the explanation that the donor said they couldn't be made public. Why would U of I accept papers if they can't be made public? Or is it a case of they can't be made public for a specified period of time? And regardless, the U of I looks bad because of all of the different explanations advanced.
Rather than simply focusing on what the UIC Library is allegedly saying or doing or not, I dug a little deeper to learn about those who are propelling this story.
First, if Tom Maguire has nothing more than his ultra-right blog JustOneMinute to qualify him, it doesn't. Reading a few more of his entries did nothing to strengthen his credibility in my eyes.
Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the morally righteous Ethics and Public Policy Center, home to such conservative stalwarts as former US Senator Rick Santorum. Cross Stan off the objective journalism list.
However, Professor Stephen Diamond is an interesting character with a fascinating resume. I will be interested in what he has to say if this story grows any real legs. Regarding Maguire and Kurtz, not so much.
Stanley Kurtz is writing for the National Review - no one would claim that it is a politically neutral publication, least of all the people that work there. It is just as easy for those on the left to dismiss him as it is for those on the right to dismiss someone writing for The Nation - but that's not to say that neither of those publications have nothing to add to the debate, or that all of their reporting is to be automatically dismissed. Sometimes the overtly biased press gets things right.
Still, at least he's a fellow at a "morally righteous" think tank. I would hate to think that he was working at a morally depraved place.
I have never had a book denied me from the stacks. Sure I can't wander in there, but that's not what Kurtz is asking for. He's asking to look at records. He probably would be satisfied with copies.
And alchemy is playing an interesting game. I guess now our rights to documents in the possession of government bodies has to be run through some sort of bias filter to decide whether the motives are pure enough to allow their release.
The release of information by public entities should have nothing to do with the motives of the person requesting the information. Imagine, if you will, what would happen, if, say the U of I was stonewalling a request for documents regardling some celebrated conservative, say, Ronald REagan. Imagine the outcry from academics about the public's right and need for information--since the U of I has a nationally recognized school of library science, I wonder where they fall on this issue? My guess is that they teach that the First Amendment, public right's to know, etc outweighs all other concerns (except when release of information might jeopardize some other agenda).
Again, maybe the U of I is on some solid ground here, but I've never heard of a public entity being allowed to refuse access to information on the grounds that the donor refused access. If that's the case, then the U of I has no business keeping information if they're not the owner and can't release the information.
Rather than debate this endlessly with the PResident, perhaps people should be asking the duly elected Board of Trustees what is going on.
"Sometimes the overtly biased press gets things right."
Of course they do, and maybe Kurtz and Diamond are really on to something.
"And alchemy is playing an interesting game. I guess now our rights to documents in the possession of government bodies has to be run through some sort of bias filter to decide whether the motives are pure enough to allow their release. "
You're off base here, whoever you are. I am not challenging Kurtz's right to see the documents based on his political leanings or anything else. We don't know at this point why he has been denied access. I was challenging his objectivity in reporting the story -- a valid approach in my opinion because for now we have only one side of the story.
To D-Man: I seem to recall a previous discussion on IP regarding the word "righteous." In this instance, I should apologize for omitting "self-" from the term that should have read "self-righteous." ;-)
John Kass does his usual:
:-)
That's most righteous of you, Politicalchemy. I was left having to think of what would be a non-righteous think tank. The NAMBLA Center? The Slobodan Milosevic Foundation for Demographic Adjustment? The Project for a New American Century?
"The Slobodan Milosevic Foundation for Demographic Adjustment?"
Heh.
How about the Chinese National Center for Individual Rights?
If you look at the website for the University of Illinois library at Chicago, they talk about how to donate papers and what will be done. One of the things that they clearly state is that the University will prepare legal documents transferring ownership to the University and will help identify appraisers, etc. regarding valuations, as well as pack up and transfer the materials.
Why would the University take possession of documents to which they have no legal title? Were these papers donated by the foundation or by an individual person, and if the latter, has that person taken some kind of write off on taxes for a charitable donation?
Where's the American Library Association and the Illinois Library Association on this?
"I have never had a book denied me from the stacks..."
I think some people are still confusing the library function with the archive function. I tried to clarify that in the very first comment above. Let me try again.
What's under discussion is the archive function, not something that is or will ever be part of the circulating collection. Every time I visit a presidential library, I have to request records be brought out and used under very closely controlled use policies. That is because it is both a specialized library and an archive. To even get to browse the secondary sources in the reading room, you have to apply for research credentials. Typically, you have to come up with something better than curiousity or that you're writing an article for the political version of the National Enquirer.
There are plenty of things I'd sure like to see in archives that aren't available. I file the proper paperwork and sometimes I get to see them. There are also parts of the collection that are closed and will remain so until the restrictions put in place for them to be opened are met. Often, this means that everyone mentioned is deceased.
As for the "differing" stories on whether the records were releasable, unless someone was getting their info straight from the archivist, most likely someone called and the undergrad at the info desk downstairs might have done their best to answer the phone and get the person connected with the right department. Whether they had any idea about whether any request was likely to be met is not something to build a good quote on.
You've got a tempest in a teapot. Speculate away, as you please, but it has little to do with what is at issue in the non-release of the records as far as I can tell.
Typically, you have to come up with something better than curiousity or that you're writing an article for the political version of the National Enquirer.
See, that's my point exactly. You can't just declare that some publication is the "political version of the National Enquirer" (which to its credit was first with the John Edwards story), and that those working for it are not granted the same rights that other members of the press are. Whenever the Patriot Act comes up, librarians are more than happy to bore us to death with what brave and stalwart champions of the First Amendment they are, but now they are supposed to deny people the right to research because someone might sniff that the National Review isn't a respectable publication? Should they do the same to a journalist from Mother Jones? And, it should be pointed out (again - see someone else's post above) that Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at a think tank. Should librarians also have to judge the level of self-righteousness of think tanks, and deny researchers the right to materials based on their opinions?
I realize that there are plenty of rules for seeing restricted materials - special collections, artifacts, etc. You can't just check out a stack of historical documents from a library the way you can a Thomas the Tank Engine book. But librarians should not be in the position of judging which journalists have a right to materials based on their employers. And if Kurtz had to come up with something better than "curiosity" or his connection to a filthy right wing rag like National Review, how about that he's a member of the press investigating the prior history of a guy that could well be the president? Considering Obama's slim resume, I would think that even his supporters would be a little curious about his previous accomplishments. I thought that this would be one of the reasons why we have library archives.
If I, as a member of the public, want to ask a public library for something in their archives, either pursuant to a library card, or pursuant to the FOIA, are you saying that because the materials are in the archives, I can't get them unless I prove to the library I have some really good reason for looking at them? I understand that for rare documents, that they have to be preserved, and maybe access limited, but I don't think that's what we're talking about. Librarians argue every day that they're on the front line of attacks on the First Amendment, so how does that apply to archived material? Again, we're talking about a public library, not a private library that can set its own rules.
It bothers me that most public libraries take the position that all material must be made available to the public (in other words, no filtering devices because they affect the First Amendment) but in this case because materials are archived, that somehow the public now has to demonstrate to someone the reason that the public wants the material.
According the the Trib, the records will now be released. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-obama-library-both-23aug23,0,6077865.story
D-Man, IP...did you BOTH miss the "self-righteous" part?
And I will stand behind that label for the Ethics and Public Policy Center -- for crying out loud, Rick Santorum is a Senior Fellow.
"According the the Trib, the records will now be released."
Well there ya go. Now we'll all know.
"According the the Trib, the records will now be released."
Good. I doubt there's anything earth-shattering there, but the last thing I want is for the UI to be stuck in the middle of a controversy like this.
"D-Man, IP...did you BOTH miss the "self-righteous" part?"
Not sure what I supposed to catch?