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.