USD discovers the better part of valor

I found the following in my inbox this morning:

Statement from the Provost

Dear USD Community:

We recently received complaints relating to a post by USD Law Professor Tom Smith on his personal blog concerning the causes of COVID-19. The complaints alleged violations of various university and School of Law policies.

As a threshold matter, we sought to determine whether the blog post at issue was protected by our policy on academic freedom. After a thorough legal review, it was determined that the expression was protected by that policy.

This conclusion in no way amounts to an endorsement by the university of the opinions shared in the blog post.

Academic freedom lies at the core of the mission of the University of San Diego. At the same time, we are committed to providing an educational environment that honors the dignity of every individual. Those two commitments can and must co-exist. It is important that members of the university community exercise their freedom in a responsible fashion, attentive to the impact of their protected opinions and sensitive to all members of the community, especially those who may feel vulnerable, marginalized or fearful that they are not welcomed. Members of the university community may feel an obligation, and certainly have the freedom, to criticize opinions that they believe demean the dignity of others.

As a contemporary Catholic university, we have a responsibility to promote a safe, just and inclusive environment within the university and in the larger society. We recently announced The Horizon Project, a comprehensive five-year plan to take concrete action to build a more inclusive campus community. As part of that project, the School of Law has announced specific initiatives to promote diversity, equity and inclusion within the law school community. This vital work is ongoing and will remain a focus for continuing and additional action by the university and the School of Law.

Gail F. Baker
Vice President and Provost

Of course, I would prefer a statement from the University president and the Dean of the Law School retracting and apologizing for calling me a racist, and I will continue to demand that, but this is, my lawyer tells me, as close to unqualified victory as you ever see in this day and age.

I want to thank my intrepid attorney, Samantha Harris, and soon-to-be attorney, Sabrina Conza of FIRE, as well as the Academic Freedom Alliance and its directors Keith Whittington and Robbie George of Princeton University, who paid for my lawyer, as well as FIRE, and the many other academics, judges, lawyers, and yes, bloggers, who rallied to my support. I also want to thank the many old friends and students who wrote to me and to the university in my support. I especially want to thank my fearless colleagues at USD Law who wrote to the president and provost of the university as well as the dean of the law school and demanded that the investigation of me be stopped.

As people who follow the Right Coast will know, I feel keenly the horrible oppression of the Chinese, Uyghur and Tibetan peoples by the Chinese Communist party, and I fully intend to keep blogging about these too often forgotten peoples. I will also keep covering the origins of the coronavirus story and its possible connection to gain-of-function research in Wuhan.

Nobody should feel demeaned or marginalized by my criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Republic of China, and their many and documented crimes against humanity, or by my entirely reasonable skepticism about the CCP’s hypotheses about the origins of the coronavirus, a skepticism, I might add, that is shared by the WHO, the US Department of State and many former US Government officials. Quite the contrary. The rights of everybody to be treated with dignity and respect are better served, in my humble opinion, by people standing up against bullies, whether they are a mob of students and administrators at a US university or the vast and mighty Chinese party-state. Standing up to the bullies at USD was nothing compared to what young people in Hong Kong, Catholic priests in Shanghai, Falun Gong followers, Tibetan monks, Uyghur teachers and translators, human rights lawyers in Beijing, and many, many others do on a daily basis. We should all take inspiration from them.