In a disproportionate and heavy-handed response to a specific problem, the University of Birmingham (UK) has banned staff from hosting personal web pages (including blogs) on their systems. “The Guardian has the story”:http://education.guardian.co.uk/administration/story/0,9860,1166989,00.html . And staff at Birmingham have “a campaign”:http://web.bham.ac.uk/web_campaign/ to defend their right to host personal material.
{ 7 comments }
reuben 03.11.04 at 1:55 pm
I bet David Lester hasn’t wasted his time setting up no stinkin’ website.
More seriously, my understanding is that it is standard practice for universities to provide server space for personal websites. In the outside world, though, this is pretty much unheard of (at least to my knowledge). What the rest of us do (including a lot of people who are paid less than academics), is pony up the cash for our own site or blog. I’m not asking this to be snarky, but why should unversities provide free space for professors to build websites on anything under the sun? Is it an implicit part of the bargain? Is it seen as encouraging creativity and thought? And if they should do it, where should lines be drawn?
Cheers
Iysam 03.11.04 at 2:05 pm
I don’t think that banning the websites will do any help, instead people will pay for websites, and as a result, have more sophisticated websites, which means that they will have a more proffessional website (which means a more proffessional antisemitic website).
visit my cool website :)
jdsm 03.11.04 at 2:44 pm
Just to respond to reuben, it is without doubt the case that it costs a university absolutely nothing to allow it’s staff to host websites on its server. The amount of space they take up is tiny compared to the rest of the crap on there.
I choose not to use mine because my alloted web address contains a tilde, which is just plain annoying.
Jeremy Osner 03.11.04 at 4:50 pm
jdsm — true but that does not go to Reuben’s point — It would also cost (say) Bank of America or Wal-Mart virtually nothing to provide its employees with free space on their servers; however BoA does not do so, nor does Wal-Mart, nor do most employers, including those with large computer facilities.
BP 03.11.04 at 5:37 pm
Not so, Mr. Osner. Academics (teaching staff and students) have had access to web space provided by their university since time immemorial (or at least, the late 80s), since the WWW originated, essentially, in academia. Businesses are relative johnny-come-latelies to the Internet.
In addition the environments are different: universities are chock-full of computers already, and typically host websites on-site. The people to be found on campus are usually smarter and more tech-savvy than the average person, thus reducing support-related costs.
WalMart is a store. Non-administrative personel sits behind cash registers, not PCs. WalMart is not in the business of hosting. Support costs are likely to be significant.
That said, a university is of course completely entitled to set policy with regards to its own property, and academics can but grumble.
mjones 03.11.04 at 9:22 pm
I’ve never liked the argument that because something doesn’t exist in the private sector, it is a perk that we at universities should perhaps do without. Why not turn that around: perhaps all organizations with sufficient resources should provide server space to their employees? (Not to mention job security…)
John Quiggin 03.12.04 at 8:04 am
The point isn’t the cost of hosting as can be seen by the examples of the telephone and email. Most companies allow reasonable private use of company telephones and email but would still claim the right the discipline a staff member who used company phones or emails, not to mention company premises, for political purposes of which they disapprove.
Attempts by a university to do the same (I have experience of one such case) are rightly viewed as an attack on academic freedom.
If cost were an issue, the university IT service could deal with it by billing departments and letting them work it out. In this case, as in most cases of this kind, the issue is content. It’s no different than if the person concerned were told not to air their views while they were physically on the campus.
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