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Feinstein, too, lowers the bar by praising Mukasey. She accepts his statement that, “I was asked at the hearing and in your letter questions about the hypothetical use of certain coercive interrogation techniques…hypotheticals are different from real life, and in any legal opinion the actual facts and circumstances are critical.” Mukasey would have you believe that questions about waterboarding are purely hypothetical in nature...
...human affairs is indeed possible. Surely we can take these happy messages from President Drew G. Faust’s inauguration ceremony a couple of weeks ago. She brought smiles to every face by reading from President James B. Conant’s ’14 1951 letter to his unknown successor. It began, “Dear Sir”—a stunning reminder that in 50 years, even at Harvard, we can transcend our unacknowledged prejudices...
...This symbol of Faust’s triumph, and Harvard’s, had a special significance for me because of a letter my mother received in 1934. It was from the University of Michigan, and it began, “We take pleasure in informing you that you will be permitted to register as a first year student in the Medical School…” At that time, Harvard still judged women unsuitable for careers in medicine, but here was Michigan admitting the ambitious daughter of Ukrainian laborers. My mother’s letter was addressed...
...letter, Conant wondered “how the free world is going to get through the next fifty years.” He then expressed confidence that, if Harvard were not destroyed, it would be maintaining its “traditions of academic freedom, of tolerance for heresy.” The connection between the two kinds of freedom would have been painfully evident in 1951. Human freedom—the privilege of self-determination—had very nearly been lost only a few years earlier, in World War II. And academic freedom—the special responsibility enjoyed...
...real significance for us in Conant’s letter is the immediacy of the threats to both kinds of freedom and the connection between them...