DEAN AT SAN DIEGO LAW EXPRESSES HIS SUPPORT FOR “DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION” BY MAKING CLEAR THAT “diversity” doesn’t include different ideas, and conservatives aren’t included.

I’m happy to see that Larry Alexander, despite his sin of promoting bourgeois virtues like hard work, got a letter of support from numerous colleagues. The dean, meanwhile, should be sent for remedial lessons in the enlightenment tradition, and in common decency.

Alexander’s colleague Tom Smith adds:

The point is, a man or woman should be entitled to express him or herself in the public prints without having a Dean rain down a ton of politically correct nonsense on his head, for heaven’s sake. Especially on one, i.e. Larry, who nearly put this law school on the map. And also, I just have to say, what Larry is calling for (get up in the morning, go to your job, don’t take drugs, don’t have kids out of wedlock, etc., etc.) is rather in line with traditional Catholic teaching, is it not? So if someone says something that is “loudly dogma[tic]”, to coin a phrase, in a newspaper, or at least is consistent with that dogma, he runs the risk of being shamed by the administration of a nominally Catholic law school? That just ain’t rat. Larry of course is not Catholic, he’s a secular Jew, but he’s advocating things that are absolutely in line with what a good or even just sort of good Catholic person would do or practice.

Yes, you’d think that Alexander’s law school dean — who, frankly, I’ve never heard of — would be a bit slower to condemn the most famous and celebrated scholar on his faculty. Well, you might think that, if you hadn’t been paying attention to academia the last few years. And nominally Catholic law schools are pretty nominal these days.

Plus, from the comments: “The Dean’s ignorant response has disgraced the school. His letter, in effect said, ‘shut up, you might discomfit the poor darlings.’ Lawyers have to bring dispassionate judgment to the most troubling human issues. By publishing such a patronizing view of USD law students, he suggests they are not emotionally fit to handle the profession for which they train.”

If deans can’t bring more adult judgment than students do, why have deans? And, frankly, if law students can’t handle an oped about bourgeois values, how are they to be trusted — as lawyers are — to protect clients’ lives, property, and liberty with no more than their own ability to think clearly and express themselves persuasively?