David Cole

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | David Cole |Amrit Singh

If you are systematically engaged in lawbreaking, lawyers can be very annoying. They sue, and their suits may lead courts to declare your actions illegal. So Donald Trump, who has launched his second term with a blizzard of blatantly illegal actions, many of which have been suspended by the courts, has decided to address the problem at its root. He’s targeting lawyers, punishing them for doing nothing more than filing lawsuits he opposes, or hiring lawyers he does not like.

3 weeks ago | nybooks.com | David Cole

For much of the last fifty years, academic freedom has been, you might say, academic. Its central principle—that politicians have no authority to censor the teaching, research, and writing of professors in the nation’s universities—was so well accepted that it was rarely even tested. No more. Academic freedom today is under attack in ways the country has not seen since the cold war. Yet at the very moment it is most needed, universities seem reluctant to defend it.

3 weeks ago | takimag.com | David Cole |Theodore Dalrymple

You know what I hate? Liberals!Ooooh, I hate ’em so much. Bet you do too. C’mon, shake your fist at ’em with me. C’mon, do it!Shake harder, boy; they’re still here!The thing I hate most about liberals is how dumb they are! Dumb, dumb, dumb, amirite? Like, did you hear, there’s this “liberal” historian, championed by The New York Times and MSNBC. The Times said this historian is the greatest and wisest who ever lived! And you know what that dumb, dumb, dumb liberal “historian” wrote?

4 weeks ago | rsn.org | Eugene Volokh |Michael C. Dorf |David Cole

The government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing First Amendment–protected speech. We write as constitutional scholars—some liberal and some conservative—who seek to defend academic freedom and the First Amendment in the wake of the federal government’s recent treatment of Columbia University. The First Amendment protects speech many of us find wrongheaded or deeply offensive, including anti-Israel advocacy and even antisemitic advocacy.

1 month ago | takimag.com | David Cole |Theodore Dalrymple

What do you do when your entire identity has been built around a “they” that’s oppressing you, but “they” don’t actually seem to be oppressing you? You’ve taken on “victim” as your identity, but you’re not being victimized enough. So you’re forced to live vicariously through “Hitler the victim.”Ah, Darryl Cooper again. My least favorite person of 2024.