At the height of the Second Red Scare, Yale University covered itself in glory when Yale president Charles Seymour declared, “There will be no witch-hunts at Yale because there will be no witches.” In other words, no McCarthyite congressional committee is going to investigate our professors because…we’ll make sure not to hire any professors who’d be investigation-worthy. That’s what they called protecting academic freedom—I kid you not—during the 1950s.* I was reminded of old Charles Seymour when I read in the New York Times that Yale Law School has suspended Helyeh Doutaghi, deputy director of the Law and Political Economy Project, whose work and affiliated faculty and staff I’ve long admired and spoken with. Why was Doutaghi suspended, which, the […]