Academic blogger Erik Ringmar, who fell out spectacularly with the London School of Economics last year, has returned to the attack with a book, A Blogger's Manifesto: Free Speech and Censorship in a Digital World. The LSE features heavily in his treatment of censorship.
Ringmar resigned from the LSE this year, saying that the university authorities had made his life "unbearable" after he gave a talk to prospective students, in which he said that lecturers spent most of their time and attention to research. He told the students they would be taught just as well at London Metropolitan University (a new university leagues below the LSE in the academic pecking order).
He repeated his remarks on his blog, where he also questioned why most of the senior jobs in his department were held by English academics.
Sir Howard Davies, the LSE's director, warned Ringmar to apologise for damaging the school, writing: "The issue here is not a policy on blogging, it is whether a colleague can publicly abuse his employer and his colleagues without consequences."
The book expresses Ringmar's anger and bitterness at what he sees as the "hypocrisy" of LSE. Now on the staff of National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, Ringmar says his new employers couldn't care less what he writes on his blog. "They take the curious view that university professors should have the right to say whatever they like, both in their classrooms and online," he says.
The incident divided the LSE. Ringmar got a lot of support from students - perhaps not surprisingly as he criticised "absent-minded" staff, and called the students "some of the smartest, most interesting, intelligent, rich, successful and all-round attractive people on the planet".
When the argument surfaced on EducationGuardian.co.uk's Mortarboard, opinion was divided. "The issue is that a major academic institution that prides itself on its knowledge of free speech, are in fact experts on free speech, can not accept criticism of themselves and need to control information regarding themselves," one of the comments said.
But another observer felt: "Ringmar was not reprimanded by the LSE for telling the truth to students regarding the delivery of undergraduate teaching. He was reprimanded for making defamatory remarks regarding his colleagues both in his talk and on his blog. While he has a right to free speech, abusing that right to slag off colleagues is at least unprofessional and he rightly had his wrists slapped. It is clear in the LSE response that this is the reason why he was warned - to twist it into some kind of cover up of the horrible truth about undergraduate teaching and one man's struggle against the tyranny of the LSE management for his right to free speech is ridiculous."
Is freedom to blog an inalienable right? Ringmar takes the most robust libertarian line. "Should we behave ourselves? Should we fall silent?" he asks. "Absolutely not!"
Others - the Guardian included - insist bloggers behave themselves.
