Harvard for Truth

Starting in the 1990s, I noticed an odd and upsetting phenomenon. Students at American colleges – many of them my clients – were being charged in disciplinary tribunals not for what they were alleged to have done, but rather for what they said. I defended my clients by citing not only the long American tradition of free speech and Due Process in general, but also the principles of academic freedom – the extent to which speech was supposed to be ever freer on college campuses than in “the real world.” The way I put it then (and, alas, now) was and is: “Speech that is fully protected in Harvard Square is penalized in Harvard Yard.” (What a difference a mere fence can make!)