Shunning Summers

If you've not yet read Eric Rauchway's"California Dreamin': Chermerinsky, Summers, and Academic Freedom," TNR, 19 September, do yourself the favor. Across a broad spectrum of political commitment, voices for whom I've learned to have the greatest respect – Eric Alterman, Tim Burke, Daniel Drezner, Nonpartisan, Erin O'Connor, Glenn Reynolds, Margaret Soltan, Siva Vaidhyanathan and, with some hemming and hawing, even Bitch PhD – are lining up in support of Rauchway's forceful defense of academic freedom. It's no wonder that the UC, Davis, faculty members who launched the petition to deny Summers an opportunity to speak on the campus want"to see the story just die at this point."