Michael Taube: Should Google really be funding academia?

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The role of a university professor can be intoxicating. You write, research, publish and speak for a living. You become an expert in a particular field of study. You share your knowledge with everyone from young, inquisitive minds to other professors. And you get paid for it, too.

There can also be occasional moral dilemmas in the professorial profession. What if your work and research in the cloistered ivory towers isn’t as independent and free as most of us think it is — or should be?

One notable example is some academics walking in the land of the tech giants.

Some Canadian professors vocally opposed to government policies intended to rein in Big Tech through Bill C-18, which would force tech giants to pay for the news they monetize, are affiliated with a group that has received funding from those same tech giants.

The Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, or CIPPIC, has in the past received money from Amazon and Google. University of Ottawa Professor Michael Geist, one of the country’s loudest critics of C-18, is affiliated with CIPPIC.

There’s nothing wrong with university professors writing about, studying and researching tech giants like Google, Meta and Amazon. When that relationship becomes too close however, it can raise red flags as to whether we’re learning the right ideas and concepts from professors, or if we’re only learning ideas and concepts the tech giants believe are right.

“Some of the leading academic voices backing Google as part of a landmark (U.S.) Supreme Court case have personally benefited from the influence of the tech giant over the years,” Washington Examiner investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky noted in a March 27 piece.

It can raise red flags

This refers to Gonzalez v. Google, where 19 internet law scholars argued in support of upholding Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act in a January amicus brief. The federal statute is “at the heart of the case shielding companies like Google from liability for content posted by users,” wrote Kaminsky, and is a case many experts believe “could reshape content moderation and speech online.”

Here’s the problem. The Examiner “found that several of the same legal scholars who signed on to the brief scored Google research funding, fellowships, and consulting gigs, while also maintaining other ties to the tech giant.” Three law professors, Georgetown’s Anupam Chander, Nebraska’s Mailyn Fidler and Arizona’s Jane Bambauer, were all mentioned due to previous work and financial relationships with Google.

The amount of funding isn’t insignificant, either.

“Google has provided at least $1.86 million since 2011 to George Mason Law School programs,” wrote Kaminsky, “including hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Law and Economics Center, according to the Tech Transparency Project.” That’s just one university in a nation with 4,360 post-secondary institutions.

This isn’t an isolated problem for American academics. University professors in most western democracies could also nod approvingly at the charms, pitches and dollar signs potentially flashed by tech giants.

This isn’t an isolated problem for American academics

This brings us to CIPPIC. It’s described as “Canada’s first and only public interest technology law clinic” on its website, and is based at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law. It concentrates on law and technology matters like privacy, free expression, intellectual property and telecommunications policy.

CIPPIC was founded in 2003 “with a start-up grant from an Amazon.com cy-près fund received by Prof. Michael Geist,” which was matched by the Ontario Research Network for Electronic Commerce. It also received a “transformative gift” from Prof. Pam Samuelson and Dr. Robert Glushko in 2007. This married couple’s financial support helped set up similar clinics at University of California, Berkeley (where they’re both based), American University, Fordham University and University of Colorado, Boulder.

Meanwhile, Google provided “funding support” for CIPPIC’s Google Policy Fellowship (Canada) program. This 10-week summer fellowship included a bursary of $10,000. “Google and the host organizations are not partners or affiliates,” according to CIPPIC’s website.

That’s two tech giants linked to a little-known, public university-affiliated technology law clinic based in Canada. Which raises red flags that require further investigation.

I originally contacted CIPPIC director Vivek Krishnamurthy and general counsel David Fewer, and ultimately heard back from Jesse Robichaud, the director of issues management and media relations. Robichaud wrote that the original seed money came from “proceeds from a successful class-action lawsuit against Amazon, otherwise known as a ‘cy-pres.’ ” This means “a judge — not Amazon — ordered that some of the funds be given to the University of Ottawa to establish a technology law clinic,” he continued in his email to me. “CIPPIC is funded by individual donations and government grants, not by corporations.”

What about Google?

“CIPPIC participated in the Google Summer Fellowship program in the 2010s,” Robichaud said. “This program involved Google providing university students with stipends to spend a summer working with one of several dozen public interest technology organizations around the world. The clinic has not participated in this program since 2018.”

He also noted CIPPIC “has never engaged in lobbying and has not met with any Designated Public Office Holders regarding any Canadian legislation, regulation, policy, or program, including bills C-11 and C-18. On the contrary, Parliamentary committees routinely invite CIPPIC’s staff to testify before them at open public hearings on matters within CIPPIC’s expertise.”

What to make of this? Even if we exclude the Amazon connection, the CIPPIC-Google relationship remains problematic. Funding for the Google fellowship may have ended, but the tech giant’s previous ties to the Canadian law clinic are similar to its current and former ties with the U.S. internet law professors mentioned in the Washington Examiner piece.

The CIPPIC-Google relationship remains problematic

This older association also creates some serious question marks related to CIPPIC’s study and research about Google and other tech giants.

For instance, Krishnamurthy and student intern Lexie Misterski released a short paper on March 16 that included criticism of Bill C-18. That’s the Liberal government’s Online News Act, which targets Google and Facebook to negotiate financial arrangements to pay for Canadian news content they preview and link to. Google has been vehemently opposed to the bill — as has Geist, who recently called it “a tax on large internet platforms for the free expression of their users.” The CIPPIC paper made no mention of the clinic’s prior links with Google, however.

As Kaminsky wrote in his piece in the Washington Examiner, legitimate questions exist concerning links between Big Tech and academia. For the sake of higher education and academic freedom, they need to be examined.

National Post

Michael Taube, a columnist for Troy Media and Loonie Politics, was a speechwriter for former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper.