Others at PBC have commented on Robert Weissberg’s moving article at Minding the Campus. Here is an excerpt, about the “hidden” and sometimes tragic costs of political correctness:

…an anonymous letter from irritated black students complained of Nagel’s “racism” and included the preposterous change of “workplace violence.” [Weissberg does not specify at which campus this terrible incident took place.] After a protracted and bungled internal university investigation, two federal trials (I testified at one), he was stripped of his teaching responsibilities and coerced into retirement. Interestingly, having been charged as “racist,” his departmental colleagues, save two conservatives, abandoned him. A few years later, partially as a result of this emotionally and financially draining incident ($100,000 out-of-pocket for legal fees), he committed suicide. I can only speculate that he believed that years spent being a “good liberal” (including service in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division) would insulate him from being denounced as a “racist.” Nor would he have anticipated that the university would spend the hundreds of thousands in legal fees to punish a famous tenured faculty member who “offended” two students. Nagel’s sad saga undoubtedly provided useful lessons to many others: stupidity can really be dangerous, even in a university. Better keep quiet.