Last Tuesday, students at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs received an e-mail advising them not to discuss or post WikiLeaks links online, especially on popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The e-mail was forwarded to students by the Office of Career Services, who received the advisory from a State Department official who is an alumnus of the school.
"Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government," the e-mail said.
WikiLeaks is an international nonprofit organization that publishes anonymous submissions of government documents and conversations that would otherwise be unavailable to the public.
Though many NYU students do not know much about the controversy surrounding WikiLeaks, some have reacted strongly to the warning issued to Columbia students.
"College students should be able to send something like that to another friend in the sense of letting other people know about it," Stern junior Stanton Bhola said.
"I think the [censorship] is encroaching on our First Amendment rights, and the government should not be doing anything about it because it's America," CAS freshman Sneha Banerjee said.
"It is unrealistic for them to expect college students not to discuss something as momentous and important as this," CAS freshman Paulette Ang said.
Professor of politics Steven Brams has mixed feelings on the issue. "I believe in the disclosure of certain kinds of relationships," he said. "But on the other hand, certain relationships should be kept private."
Brams also referred to the warning to Columbia students as "ridiculous" and said, "This is publicly available now, and just communicating what's already been made public, to me, doesn't seem to be a serious offense. It's going to be communicated anyway. It's going to be posted. So what if you e-mail somebody that this is pretty interesting? I don't think that should have any consequence. [I also] don't think it's going to be that easy to check up on students. I don't know how this could ever be enforced."
Spokesman for the State Department Philip J. Crowley denied any federal involvement in the matter.
"We have instructed State Department employees not to access the WikiLeaks site and download posted documents using an unclassified network since these documents are still classified," he said in an e-mail. "If an employee of the State Department sent such an e-mail, it does not represent a formal policy position."
Columbia later reversed its stance on student discussion of WikiLeaks and assured them "that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequence."
