Academic Freedom or Treason?

University of California economist Dr. Dan Sumner says the research he presented last year to help resolve a World Trade Organization dispute “was quite conventional.”

Like any good economist, Sumner maintains, he merely used economic models to show that U.S. cotton production would fall and world prices rise if the U.S. removed its cotton subsidies.

A simple case of an American professor exercising his academic freedom? Yes. Still, that hasn’t prevented firestorm of criticism among U.S. farm groups claiming that Sumner’s efforts are tantamount to treason.

Posted by Jim Langcuster at May 21, 2004 09:39 AM | TrackBack