A Tale of Two Letters

Tonight, I read two academic letters of public protest against What Is Going On—one from 2,000 of the nation’s top scientists and one from more than 80 Harvard Law School professors. The first letter is about the threat to scientific research, the second about the threat to the rule of law. Despite being in a discipline adjacent to the teaching and study of law, I felt that it was the letter of the scientists that truly spoke to me about what is politically at stake in this moment. And that was because it was the scientists who spoke the clearest, most direct, most forceful, and least artful, language of political alarm. At the simplest level, the scientists know how to […]