Standing Up for Free Speech on Campus
Erwin Chemerinsky is a left-of-center legal scholar and prolific author who is now Dean of the University of California’s Berkeley School of Hall, formerly known as Boalt Hall (named after a prominent 19th century attorney, John Henry Boalt, whose widow funded construction of the school’s initial building over a century ago). Berkeley’s law school was re-named—before Chemerinsky became Dean on July 1 , 2017—in part due to sensitivity regarding its namesake’s opposition to Chinese immigration and advocacy of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. I raise this because the issue of heightened “sensitivity”—frequently resulting in the removal or re-naming of historical memorials—currently roils higher education in a number of ways, including the suppression on campus of viewpoints considered to be objectionable.