Excellent letter by Tom Woods (sent a bit late but with a good excuse)--
February 14, 2005
Carol C. Harter, President
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Dear President Harter:
I am a Columbia University Ph.D. and the author of a recent New York Times bestseller on American history. I join the rest of the academic community in calling upon you to overturn your university’s punitive measures against the world-renowned Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a scholar of great renown whom you should be thankful to have on your faculty.
I am sure that the university administration believes that its perceived support for an aggrieved group in its handling of this matter will trump its violations of academic freedom in the eyes of the academic world. This is a serious mistake. It is well known that professors close ranks on issues like this, regardless of the substantive content of the accusation. No serious scholar wants to see the kind of chilling effect on the classroom that UNLV’s policy will have. That is why practically no one is coming to your institution’s defense: academic freedom is simply too important.
As you must know, the arguments being employed against Professor Hoppe (the so-called fact/opinion dichotomy, for example, and the point about peer-reviewed research) are entirely without merit, as Prof. Lloyd Cohen of the George Mason University School of Law pointed out to your detriment in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
If this case should not be resolved amicably, with appropriate compensation for Prof. Hoppe, and should instead wind up in the federal courts, UNLV’s reputation will – obviously – continue to suffer with each agonizingly slow day of the proceedings and the unfavorable press coverage. I urge you to intervene in this matter at once and bring the harassment and penalization of this world-renowned scholar to an end. Only then can your institution stop the rapid and ongoing deterioration of its reputation, and begin to regain the good will it has lost in the academic community as a result of this incident.
Cordially,
Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Ph.D.
cc: Board of Regents
