David Cole

Washington, D.C.

Contributor at New York Review of Books

National Legal Director, ACLU; Professor at Georgetown Law; regular contributor to NY Review of Books; author of Engines of Liberty. Views expressed are my own.

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Articles

Investing in peace of mind

1 month ago | propertyreporter.co.uk | David Cole |Sandfield Engineering

No one likes to plan for a crisis. It means contemplating all manner of unpalatable issues, from injuries and disrupted services to environmental damage, financial problems and even criminal prosecution. Sadly, when it comes to environmental pollution, a crisis is always potentially just around the corner.
From Evasion to Defiance | David Cole

1 month ago | nybooks.com | David Cole

On June 2, 1919, bombs went off in eight cities across the country. One blew the door off the house of the country’s attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, in Georgetown. The government’s response was to round up thousands of foreign nationals, not on charges that they were involved in the bombings but for technical immigration violations and association with communist or anarchist organizations.
Why Harvard Defied Him

2 months ago | almendron.com | David Cole

Last week the Trump administration proposed what amounts to a hostile takeover of the country’s oldest and wealthiest university. In an over-the-top letter to Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, and the senior fellow of its board, Penny Pritzker, administration officials demanded the power to overhaul and oversee what the school teaches, who it hires, and who it admits.
Why Harvard Defied Him | David Cole

2 months ago | nybooks.com | David Cole

Last week the Trump administration proposed what amounts to a hostile takeover of the country’s oldest and wealthiest university. In an over-the-top letter to Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, and the senior fellow of its board, Penny Pritzker, administration officials demanded the power to overhaul and oversee what the school teaches, who it hires, and who it admits.
Trump’s attacks on law firms are an attack on law itself | David Cole and Amrit Singh

2 months 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.
Academic Freedom in Peril | David Cole

2 months 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.
The Third Worlding of the American Mind

2 months 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?
A Statement From Constitutional Law Scholars on Columbia

Mar 27, 2025 | 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.
Darryl Cooper Cites Me, Incites Me

Mar 25, 2025 | 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.
A Constitutional Redline | David Cole, Daniel Drake

Mar 22, 2025 | nybooks.com | Daniel Drake |David Cole

This week the NYR Online published an open letter signed by eighteen constitutional scholars from across the ideological spectrum that argued that the Trump administration’s treatment of Columbia University “risks deterring and suppressing constitutionally protected speech.” One of the signatories is David Cole, who since Trump’s inauguration has been writing in our pages about the dangers of the president’s encroachment on the Constitution.