Bill Buckley famously quipped he’d “sooner live in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the 2,000 faculty members of Harvard University.”
Seems the late godfather of American conservatism might have some agreement here — from the Harvard faculty itself. This week, 28 current and emeritus members of the Harvard Law faculty took issue with the university’s new policy on sexual misconduct.
The profs say Harvard’s new procedures “lack the most basic elements of fairness and due process, are overwhelmingly stacked against the accused and are in no way required by Title IX law or regulation.”
They also accuse the university of putting aside its own cherished principles and traditions and caving in to “the demands of certain federal administrative officials.”
While Harvard may be alone in provoking such a high-profile reaction from its law faculty, it is hardly the only campus to have kowtowed to the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights — which now has more than 60 campuses under investigation.
Where once we looked to our universities as ideals of the civilized community, at too many colleges today we see political correctness substitute for good judgment, due process and basic fairness.
Good for the Harvard law professors for speaking up.
But how ironic — and sad — that an institution that has produced so many of America’s finest constitutional scholars now finds itself indicted by those same scholars for violating basic rights and liberties on its own campus.