A Message From a Scalia Law Professor

Dear Colleagues

Some of us have spent time at colleges or universities where people are sometimes punished for expressing a particular thought or having a particular identity—institutions where everyone knows that it is not safe to say something or be someone that some professor (or professors) or some administrator (or a whole administration) does not approve of. In those environments we have learned fear—fear of the price of being who we are and of saying what we believe. It is a tragic thing to have to live that way. I am confident that I speak for the people who lead this law school—the professors and the administrators—when I say that our law school is *not* such a place. There is no need for fear here. Be who you are, say what you think, and welcome everyone else in our community (and all of our guests) to be and do the same. But it can be difficult to unlearn fear. And so it is entirely understandable that you might worry about such things even at our school, until you gain confidence that we are who we say we are: a constantly changing and growing, yet consistently honorable and civil, community of inquisitive and energetic students and practitioners of one of the essential components of any decent society: the law. I cannot guarantee you that everyone will always be a perfect manifestation of all that good stuff (indeed, I suspect none of us ever will be), but I am quite sure that we try in good faith. Nor, I am sure, will this note be enough by itself to fully reassure anyone who has known the kind of fear I mentioned at the top of this message. But I do hope it helps.

This is a school where we work together to make the most of a great educational environment, to elevate each other, and to make the world a better place. To the extent we can show the rest of the world how to do those things, all the better!

Sincerely,