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Friday, February 11, 2005
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Go Ahead and Sue UD hates the way Americans are always suing each other. Occasionally, though, she stumbles upon lawsuits - or threatened lawsuits - that seem to her reasonable. Here are two: 1.) Poor Professor Hans Hoppe, a first-rate economist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, walked into a politically correct buzz saw while lecturing on the propensities of different social groups to save money for the future. His generalizations about gay people being less future-oriented than some other groups “made me feel uncomfortable,” said one of his students, who formally complained. And the silly university, instead of explaining free speech to the complainant, put Hoppe through the now-familiar humiliating paces (docked pay, letter of reprimand). But Hoppe was hopping mad, as was the ACLU, which condemned the university. And the silly university, which didn’t know why it did what it did in the first place, and doesn’t know why it’s doing what it’s doing now, has backed down. Somewhat. Hoppe wants the letter incinerated, all pay reinstated, and an apology. The university is not so sure … So Hoppe and his friends at the ACLU will almost certainly sue. And win. And that’s fine by UD. [ By the way - on the subject of clueless universities - here's Dahlia Lithwick, in Slate, on the University of Colorado and the Ward Churchill mess: "If academic tenure means anything at all, it means professors must be allowed to say and write what they choose without fearing removal by popular referendum. That's why the decision to grant someone tenure must be taken so seriously in the first place. One hundred percent of the blame for the Churchill debacle rests with the University of Colorado's board of regents that hired, granted tenure to, and promoted an individual whose scholarship and personal qualifications are now, and must always have been, in serious question. Churchill's silly notions have been in the public domain for years. Firing him only now suggests that Bill O'Reilly, as opposed to his faculty peers, gets the deciding vote on who is allowed to teach our young people." ] 2.) The estate of Agatha Christie is considering filing a plagiarism lawsuit against a novelist who seems to have plagiarized plot, characters, and setting of a recent story from one Christie wrote 77 years ago. [For background, see UD, 2/2/05.] This too seems a justified lawsuit to UD. You can’t have writers picking away at the work of their betters just because their betters are dead and can’t defend themselves. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Update, 12 February 05: The Christie estate won't sue after all. |