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Thursday, May 23, 2013

Liability Reigns Supreme at the Corporate University


Campus administrators, alas, have become true believers in the mantra of "risk management." But in guarding against every potential exposure to threats of litigation, no matter how specious, university lawyers and administrators squeeze important elements out of academic life and learning, as well as moral and educational principles, from the collegiate experience. Enter the Department of Education's "Dear Colleague" letter sent nationwide earlier this month, which mandates changes in how universities should investigate instances of sexual harassment--including those that involve student speech.

Now, at the intersection of protected speech and so-called verbal "harassment," administrators have all the more incentive to favor the latter at the expense of the former, I write on Forbes.com. Rather than fight these incursions into the academic enterprise, we can count on academic leaders and administrators, and their lawyers, to fold. The days of principled stands by academic leaders appear to have ended because of those leaders' modern-day obsession with making every student's college experience pleasant.

"Liability Reigns Supreme at the Corporate University," Forbes.com (April 22, 2011)

[End of post]

An Informant in Our Midst


It was shocking enough, in the course of representing one Sheldon Seigel, a member of the feared Jewish Defense League (JDL) accused, with other JDL members, of a bombing-murder in 1972, that our client turned out to be a government informant. But it was even more shocking to learn that our informant-client had tape-recorded the law enforcement agents who were making promises to him that they might not have intended to keep.

Boston Globe letter: Under Obama, war, and terror, go on


Responding to an extensive Boston Globe article on President Obama, I point out in a Letter-to-the-Editor published in today's Globe that the article's author erred in crediting Obama with rolling back President Bush's War on Terror. Far from it, in fact:



The national security state has continued to make gains under Obama, and it surely has kept the inroads it made under George W. Bush. Secrecy is the order of the day, including the administration’s self-protective invocation of so-called national security to thwart court cases seeking money damages and answers by victims of our security agencies and those they surreptitiously fund in dark corners around the world.

[...]

In terms of civil liberties, there may be some change on the margins here and there, but by and large, “change you can believe in’’ has shown its true colors: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

"Under Obama, war, and terror, go on," Boston Globe, January 31, 2011

[End of Post]

Are you a real doctor?


Or, how I almost got a degree in nuclear physics.

Forbes.com: Bullying Free Speech


On Forbes.com, I take on the renewed effort by federal lawmakers to ratchet-up anti-harassment measures on campus. As FIRE has learned in its decade of experience, charges of "harassment" are already easily the most abused tool to punish speech on campus. Even if well-intentioned (and, alas, much of the ruination of today's liberal arts institutions of higher education have resulted from initially good intentions), this proposal, with restrictions that are redundant and broad, will doubtless serve to further impede student discourse.

"Bullying Free Speech," Forbes.com (January 6, 2011)

[End of post]

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