Our good friend Harvey Silverglate, co-founder of FIRE and co-author of The Shadow University, just sent a brief protest—more like a bellow—in reaction to the New York Times’s handling of the Rutgers story. A front-page Times report today said it was “hurtful” for the two Rutgers students to videotape a gay sex act by another student and put that tape on the Internet. Silverglate is incensed because “hurtful” is PC-speak and doesn’t tell the story—“It’s crime!,” he wrote. “Hurtful is one of those newly-minted words in the academy used mostly by politically correct deans trying to control student life.” We wanted to run his email here, but he offered it to his editors at the Boston Phoenix, where he has been a columnist for 40 years. We will link to it as soon as the Phoenix posts it.
———————————————
Update: Here’s the piece.
