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By EDWARD B. FISKE
c. 1980 N.Y. Times News Service
    ATHENS, Ga. - A professor has gone to jail, wearing his ceremonial
robes to symbolize his assertion that academic freedom is at stake,
for refusing to provide evidence in a sex discrimination suit against
the University of Georgia. The conflict between judicial rules and
faculty tradition has contributed to rising alarm over court and
federal intervention on campuses.
    James A. Dinnan, a 50-year-old education professor, was ordered by
U.S. District Judge Wilbur D. Owens to tell Maija Blaubergs, 33, an
assistant professor, how he voted as a member of a faculty committee
that denied her tenure. Dinnan declined, asserting that secrecy in
such decisions was essential to academic freedom. As a result of his
stand, he is serving a three-month sentence for contempt of court at
Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
    ''If academic freedom is not the right to judge one's peers free
from outside pressure or intimidation, then what is it?'' he asked in
a telephone interview from the minimum-security prison. ''I'm
fighting for the integrity of the system.''
    On the other hand, established judicial rules give Miss Blaubergs,
and anyone else involved in litigation, broad powers to gather, or
BUST IT
    
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n023  0959  13 Sep 80
 
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NYT ATHENS, Ga: months.
    Dinnan's attorneys filed an appeal with the United States Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, asking for an immediate
judgment against the contempt-of-court ruling. The court rejected
that appeal on the ground that the professor had ''the keys to prison
in his own pocket,'' but it did agree to an expedited hearing that is
expected to be concluded within a week or so.
    ''The penalty that was assessed was far out of proportion to the
worth of Dinnan's testimony to the plaintiff's case,'' said J. Ralph
Beaird, dean of the university law school.
    University officials also question whether Owens, a graduate of the
University of Georgia Law School, appreciates the principles of
faculty self-governance. They cite comments from the bench in which
he compared the secret ballot taken on tenure cases to the blackball
system used by his college fraternity.
    ''Nobody had to stand up and have backbone enough to be counted,''
the judge said. ''You would just drop a ball in. It used to make me
mad as 'h,' to be honest with you.''
    In a brief submitted in behalf of Dinnan, Dean Beaird and two
professors from the law school called the remark ''cavalier'' and
inaccurate because the reasons for tenure decisions ''are duly
reported throughout the promotion process to the committees or
authorities responsible for taking the next step in that process.''
    Owens did not issue a written opinion explaining the contempt
citation, but after it became a matter of public controversy he took
the somewhat unusual step of explaining his actions in a letter to
the editor of The Atlanta Journal.
    ''When a witness refuses to testify, he must demonstrate to the
court that the Constitution or laws of the United States give him the
right not to testify,'' the judge wrote. He said that Dinnan had been
asked to cite such a provision or law and ''could not do so.''
    There are several other issues in the debate, including the depth of
the tradition of secret ballots for which the professor says he has
gone to jail. Written secret ballots are rare at universities and
have been used at the University of Georgia only for the last two
years.
    ''Normally, committees will have an open discussion in which they
make their opinions known to each other but not to outsiders, and
then report a conclusion without names attached,'' said Miss Guthrie
of the education council.
    Another matter of dispute is how crucial Dinnan's testimony is to
Miss Blaubergs's discrimination suit. Backers of the jailed professor
suggested that the judge could at least have postponed his
imprisonment until her case was further along, on the ground that a
single vote was not that important in a case that will be decided on
many factors, including the strength of her academic record.
    But Marshall, the plaintiff's attorney, noted that the rules of
discovery did not require the testimony sought to be immediately or
obviously important. ''The legal test is whether it is helpful or
useful,'' he said.
    Members of Dinnan's family report that he has received more than 500
letters of support, and faculty members have contributed most of the
$3,000 fine.
    Miss Blaubergs, who was routinely dismissed from the faculty after
she failed to achieve tenure, has now enrolled as a first-year
student in the University of Georgia Law School. ''My long-term goal
is administrative work,'' she said, ''but I decided that if I am
going to be bloodied like this, I'd be better off if I were a
practicing lawyer.''
    Beaird said Miss Blaubergs was one of the law school's top
applicants this year and that if she decided to pursue a career as a
professor of law the school would be happy to consider her
credentials. But he added, ''Usually, our graduates go somewhere else
to teach.''
    
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