Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
- PART II CASE STUDIES IN THE POLITICS OF CIVIL LIBERTY ON CAMPUS
- 3 Columbia's Sexual Misconduct Policy: Civil Liberty versus Solidarity
- 4 Berkeley and the Rise of the Anti–Free Speech Movement
- 5 Undue Process at Penn
- 6 Renewal: The Rise of the Free Speech Movement at Wisconsin
- 7 Abolition in the Wisconsin Faculty Senate and Its Aftermath
- PART III CONCLUSIONS
- Appendix
- Index
5 - Undue Process at Penn
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
- PART II CASE STUDIES IN THE POLITICS OF CIVIL LIBERTY ON CAMPUS
- 3 Columbia's Sexual Misconduct Policy: Civil Liberty versus Solidarity
- 4 Berkeley and the Rise of the Anti–Free Speech Movement
- 5 Undue Process at Penn
- 6 Renewal: The Rise of the Free Speech Movement at Wisconsin
- 7 Abolition in the Wisconsin Faculty Senate and Its Aftermath
- PART III CONCLUSIONS
- Appendix
- Index
Summary
The famous water buffalo case at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993 catapulted the issue of political correctness into the national media's spotlight. The case involved the Penn judicial administration's pursuit of formal charges against a student for calling some noisy African American sorority women “water buffalos” – a term that most observers would not consider racist. The affair became an example of questionable, politically biased “due process” and led to the discrediting of the administration of Sheldon Hackney. Many have written about the case, including Hackney and his primary challenger in the case, Professor Alan Kors. What this chapter offers is an examination of the political strategies that Kors learned in this ground-breaking case that can serve as a blueprint for the protection of civil liberty on campus. As with the case at Columbia, no administrator would talk with me. But the events were well documented, and I spoke with all the leaders of the civil liberty movement at Penn, as well as with others. I also took advantage of the exceptional publication, the Almanac, the official newspaper of record for Penn.
The Penn story differs in one major respect from the Wisconsin story: it depends on the extraordinary political entrepreneurialism of Alan Kors. Although he had some allies, Kors was the key in the pivotal mid-1990s. While the change at Wisconsin was based on an organization with an official name and access to outside funds (the Committee for Academic Freedom and Rights), the smaller group at Penn consciously avoided such organization.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus , pp. 154 - 189Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004