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The Chronicle of Higher Education this week picked up on an interesting development at the University of Oregon—U of O general counsel Kevin Reed has sought copies of emails between economics professor Bill Harbaugh and a number of newspapers.
The Chronicle story is behind a paywall but it follows a detailed account last week by the Eugene Register Guard's Diane Dietz.
Harbaugh, who is president of the university's faculty senate, runs a blog called UO Matters.
He's regularly broken news and raised sometimes embarrassing questions about transparency on the Eugene campus.
Reed, the U of O lawyer, serves with Harbaugh on a "transparency committee" that was created in part because of concerns Harbaugh raised. The lawyer told the Register Guard his requests for Harbaugh's emails was simply an effort to ensure the transparency committee was transparent.
"The president of the Senate is one of the chief leaders on the campus," Reed told the Register Guard. "The work that he does is like the work of the president and other members of the administration, and they're all subject to the same transparency rules. I wanted to make sure we were all on the same playing field."
But Harbaugh told the paper he thinks Reed is just worried that Harbaugh is too close to various publications.
"Definitely he does," Harbaugh said, "and I do my best to maintain that belief because it obviously makes him nervous."