Here is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s letter to the Brandeis University trustees over the way in which the administration has handled the case of Prof. Donald Hindley. FIRE President Greg Lukianoff has a long summary of the case and the tradition of university actions in which it sits:

Does something seem oddly familiar about the case of Donald Hindley at Brandeis? As Torch readers well know, Donald Hindley is a professor who has served Brandeis for over 46 years and was found guilty of “racial harassment,” apparently for criticizing and explaining use of the word “[w**b***]” to deride Mexicans and other immigrants. I say “apparently” because, as Eugene Volokh so effectively has pointed out, Brandeis has not even been clear with Hindley what words got him in trouble. Still, all signs point to the use of the word “[w**b***],” which a single student apparently found so offensive that he or she filed a complaint, regardless of the context in which the term was used. If the case seems to ring a bell, it should. Such tales of PC run wild have been with us in fiction for decades. The Hindley case reminds me of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, in which a professor’s career is turned upside down after he refers to two students who did not show up for class as “spooks.” The professor, of course, meant “ghosts,” but when the two missing students turn out to be black, the incident ignites a firestorm of identity and personal politics. (The professor, it turns out, is actually a light-skinned black man himself who has hidden his race all of his life, adding a nice Rothian touch.)

Read the whole thing.