Banality of hate (repost, with a comment).

Professor LeRoy makes an important point about failing to realize the precursors to evil (here).  By staying silent when evil occurs, we are making our world less safe and diminishing our civilization.

I'm not a ConLaw person, but ...

I'm really not a ConLaw person--you can tell that from my law school transcript--but I think that there is a difference between saying something where people can walk away from the speaker and saying a lot of things where people are stuck listening to that person.  It's a hard issue, though.  I get that.

The tough issue that the Salaita case raises is that no one knows if what he says outside of class (hateful, but entirely his right, and I'd be first in line to defend him--and then first in line to meet his speech w/different speech) would also affect how he'd treat students inside class (where he would have to create a learning environment in which students would be treated fairly).  I'm glad that Prof. LeRoy is part of this debate.  I'm glad that others are, too.  What I hope is that everyone understands the complexity of the issue.

Too often, unfortunately, people say that there's only one side of a particular issue and that anyone on the other side is wrong-headed, or discriminatory, or dumb.  And that's no way to debate a peer.

Bravo to Steve Lubet for keeping this UCLA story front and center.

Hat tip to the Faculty Lounge for this post.

I loved this post about the boycott.

See here.  (Hat tip to my dad for sending it to me.)

Assuming that what this professor says is true (and I have no reason to think that it's not), I'm standing with him in solidarity.

See here.  Universities are supposed to be places in which divergent views can be heard with respect and intelligent debate.  That means that BOTH sides of a debate must be heard, not just the "popular" side.  Hat tip to Instapundit for alerting me to this story.