by Bill Tierney
Assume the opposite of the situation I actually have at USC. Assume I am deeply disappointed in my university president. I send emails to my trusted colleagues and suggest that we put forward a vote of no confidence in the president. I offer as evidence a variety of issues where I feel the president has failed and acted unethically. I send numerous emails to 20 senior colleagues over the course of the academic year and the final meeting of the Academic Senate delays a vote of no confidence in the president until the fall.
I find out in June that the president has moved to get rid of me, and is using the emails I have been sending as evidence. He has read my emails. Each of my colleagues assures me that what I have sent has been confidential and that what I wrote made sense. The president, however, feels that I am spreading lies about him and he had every right to read my emails. He informs me that he has been reading my emails since January.
Is email different from a whispered conversation? What about a phone conversation? Can the president bug my office and tap my phone? Would it be okay to open private letters I send to my colleagues? Are any of these communicative means different from email?
I don’t think so. What is different is the technology. Because the technology is new, however, does not mean that the principle should change. First and foremost, I should be able to criticize the president of my own university. Second, email should be considered private correspondence between the sender and the recipient. It appears that the first principle is increasingly questioned, and the second one has not been thoughtfully considered. We lose the first at our risk; we make a huge mistake when we do not think about the consequences of new media with the second.
