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Written by Adam
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Friday, 07 April 2006 |
Mr. Horowitz claims that Professor Mari Matsuda is a “leading legal architect of politically correct speech codes in universities” and that the speech codes at Georgetown University are a “mark that Professor Matsuda has left on the Georgetown campus.” (277-78)
Mr. Horowitz cites no evidence to back up this claim. Professor Matsuda responds, “I have never, not once, at any university, participated in the drafting, debate over, or implementation of a speech code. I had absolutely nothing to do with the code at Georgetown and I have never read it. I joined the Georgetown faculty in 1992, and would not have been in a position to influence the administration as a newcomer, and I have no idea when they adopted a code. The codes I am supposedly the architect of were largely written before my book, Words That Wound, was ever published.”
Mr. Horowitz claims that “Arbitrary censorship of hate speech, according to Professor Matsuda, was therefore preferable to the potentially devastating effects it might otherwise have on its ostensibly defensive targets.” (277)
Mr. Horowitz cites no evidence to back up this claim. As Professor Matsuda responds, “[Mr. Horowitz’s] statement is untrue. I have never advocated censorship, nor arbitrariness. My first amendment work—which I am sure the researcher, who relied on Web sources, has not read—responds to 100 years of first amendment scholarship, suggesting non-arbitrary ways to distinguish among different kinds of assaultive speech. The law already provides penalties for speech constituting libel, fighting words, threats, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. My book argued that there are non-arbitrary ways to add assaultive racist speech to the list, but cautioned against doing this broadly or without limits.”
Mr. Horowitz claims that Professor Mari Matsuda only teaches “one course with a discernible connection to law.” (280)
Mr. Horowitz cites no evidence to back up his claim. Contrary to Mr. Horowitz’s claim, Professor Matsuda responds, “most of my teaching is in a strictly traditional, doctrinal course: Torts.”
“This semester I have 125 students in ‘Torts’ and 15 in ‘Organizing for Social Change.’ This has been the ratio for my entire teaching career, and if I were not teaching my students the common law of torts, and teaching it well, I would not have been hired to teach at major law schools.”
Moreover, Professor Matsuda continues, “my students’ evaluations for Torts are among the highest in the law school, and I am known as an outstanding teacher of the basic law for first year students. (This can be confirmed by evaluations records and with Dean Carol O’Neill—Horowitz never checked) This means an entire section of students, including many conservative students, randomly assigned to take a traditional law course from me, feel they are learning ‘the law’ well.”
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