AND THE TUITION IS RIDICULOUS, TOO: “The provost has now provoked arguably the largest crisis in faculty/administration relations in the history of Brandeis.”

UPDATE: Reader Jonathan Guest emails: “In cases where professors are hauled up on the flimsiest of evidence and effectively pilloried for their very defensible words, why don’t they have a pretty strong defamation case against a university?”

Yes. I would certainly have little compunction about suing both the university administration and the complaining student in such a case. And I think that false charges of racism aimed at a professor today are like false charges of unchastity or “loathsome disease” aimed at a woman in 1890 — libelous per se. Those who make such charges should certainly be held accountable when they’re flimsy or false. Plus, I imagine that the discovery process would turn up lots of interesting information.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader George Hamid emails:

Maybe the powers that be at Brandeis should heed the words of that University’s namesake, Justice Louis Brandeis:

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s [academia’s] purposes are beneficial. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”

Indeed.