PROFESSOR WILLIAM JACOBSON: There’s an effort to get me fired at Cornell for criticizing the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Apparently, no one is allowed to criticize Black Lives Matter because inclusion. The posts in question are here and here. Says Jacobson:

Open inquiry and debate are core features of a vibrant intellectual community. This has been the way Cornell Law School operated for the 12 years I’ve been here, until now. In this toxic political environment in which intellectual diversity and differences of opinion are not tolerated, trying to shut down debate through false accusations of racism seems to be the preferred tactic.

I challenge a representative of those student groups and a faculty member of their choosing to a public debate at the law school regarding the Black Lives Matter Movement, so that I can present my argument and confront the false allegations in real time rather than having to respond to baseless community email blasts. I ask the law school to arrange an in-person live-streamed debate during fall term, or if for some reason the law school does not have in-person instruction, to arrange a ‘virtual’ format.

Throughout my legal and academic career spanning over three decades, there has never been a single instance in which I have been accused of discrimination toward any student, client or colleague. I have always treated my students as individuals, without regard to race, ethnicity or other such factors. I condemn in the strongest terms any insinuation that I am racist, and I greatly resent any attempt to leverage meritless accusations in hopes of causing me reputational harm. While such efforts might succeed in scaring others in a similiar position, I will not be intimidated.

We are living in extraordinarily dangerous times, reminiscent of the Chinese Communist Cultural Revolution, in which professors guilty of wrongthink were publicy denounced and fired at the behest of students who insist on absolute ideological orthodoxy. It’s a way of instilling terror in other students, faculty, staff, and society, so that others shut up and don’t voice dissenting views. We are seeing monuments destroyed in Taliban-fashion because they represent an uncomfortable history, movies and TV shows cancelled, and individuals disappeared from employment due to even the slightest deviation from the prevailing political culture.

This is not going to end well unless people of good concience, who support black lives but not the Black Lives Movement as it was founded and currently operates, to speak up and refuse to cower in fear.

If Jacobson is fired for his writings, I plan to ask that the Department of Education investigate Cornell Law School for entertaining a conspiracy to violate his civil rights.

And he has a PayPal donate button at the bottom of this post. I kicked in a hundred bucks.