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May 3rd, 2010
The prominent law-oriented blog The Volokh Conspiracy has been remarking extensively on the latest speech-related controversy at Harvard Law School (HLS), where Dean Martha Minow publicly mischaracterized and then criticized a private e-mail sent by one of the school's students to, it seems, a small number of colleagues several months ago. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, in a four-part series on The Volokh Conspiracy that begins here, takes essentially the same view that I took last Friday. The point is that by so strongly criticizing a privately expressed opinion, Dean Minow has declared that certain ideas—even certain academic questions—are not acceptable on campus, betraying the marketplace of ideas. (Do you agree, or do you want to know what the question is first?)
The chilling effect is already being felt on campus. Volokh has posted a response to the controversy from a person claiming to be an incoming first-year HLS student (Volokh writes, "I certainly saw no cues suggesting that it was insincere or otherwise not credible"):
I wish I were a tenured professor, and was able to say reasonable and true things freely, like the idea that things that haven't been proven yet remain unproven.
Instead, I'm ...