NOT IN OUR NAME — Three UCLA Law School faculty members condemn the UCLA faculty senate antiwar resolution, which was achieved, it seems, via procedural flimflammery:

We were mugged by about 200 of our faculty colleagues at UCLA. These colleagues condemn the liberation of Iraq and wanted to say so publicly. But they were not content to speak out in their own names, as they had every right to do. Instead, they insisted on speaking in our names — and in the names of the more than 3,000 people on the UCLA faculty. . . .

According to the rules of the academic senate, 200 members can convene a special meeting by signing petitions. Two hundred members did so, and the meeting was held last week, at a time when many on the faculty were busy teaching or preparing for class.

By the time they voted, the 200-member quorum had apparently vanished, but they went ahead anyway: 180 for the resolution, seven against and nine abstaining.

The resolution they adopted puts the academic senate on record as saying “to our fellow citizens, to the president of the United States and to our senators and representatives” that we “deplore the administration’s doctrine of preventive war and the U.S. invasion of Iraq.”

The academic senate includes us. A rump group of our colleagues put these words — words that we find loathsome — into our mouths.

A “rump group,” indeed. (Via The Volokh Conspiracy).