Bukharin did not like Kamenev and Zinoviev, and way back when they
had first been tried, after the murder of Kirov, he had said to people
close to him, "Well, so what? That's the kind of people they were;
maybe there was something to it..." (That was the classic formula of
the philistine in those years: "There was probably something to it.
... In our country they don't arrest people for nothing." And that was
said in 1935 by the leading theoretician of the Party!)
Penn State has been saying that although it sounds as if Professor
Gerard was fired for criticizing colleagues and a failed program,
there's actually much much more going on behind the scenes, but that
the university can't release confidential records. Some neutral
observers have actually bought in to that argument. Somewhere-- I
forget where-- someone wrote in a weblog "Well, why doesn't Professor
Gerard agree to release the records?"
Well, it turns out, as I suspected, that the university's confidentiality policy is purely to protect its own confidentiality-- not Professor Gerard. She is willing to release the records, and already has to the newspapers and the faculty senates. How do I know? Not from the newspapers, but because I wrote to her. She said,
I have nothing to hide and want folks to see there's no smoking
gun.
...
I'd be glad to send you the charges copy. If you want more than that,
I'm asking people to pay for the xeroxing charges and the mailing. I
just can't do bulk.
I have released all the hearing transcripts to the UP Faculty Senate,
the Altoona Senate and to the Post Gazette and the Centre Daily
Times.
I'll see I can get the charges at least, and get them posted on
the Web. But I expect we've already seen the interesting parts in the
newspaper stories.
[in full at 04.03.18b.htm . Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]
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