Antonin Scalia, Law Schools, SCOTUS, Supreme Court

Rest Of Georgetown Law Faculty To Quarreling Colleagues: OMG Stop

Sometimes you just have to laugh.

onFebruary 19, 2016 at 10:54 AMFebruary 23, 2016 at 12:13 PM

Georgetown Law: not so placid right now.

Tensions remain high at Georgetown University Law Center after two liberal professors criticized Justice Antonin Scalia following his death and two right-of-center professors criticized the liberals for their criticism. According to Georgetown Law Weekly, yesterday afternoon the class of Professor Gary Peller, the main liberal antagonist, had a security guard posted outside.

Although Georgetown students haven’t received more sniping emails (and are presumably grateful for that), the professors are not so lucky. Yesterday afternoon, Professor Peller sent an email to all faculty and staff accusing his two conservative/libertarian colleagues, Professors Randy E. Barnett and Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, of defaming him:

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From: Gary Peller
Date: Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 4:29 PM
To: All Faculty and Staff
Subject: Mitigating Defamatory Assertions

Faculty and staff: I am writing to correct falsehoods about me contained in the recent email from Randy and Nick. I regret sending another communication on this subject but I hope you understand the need to mitigate any harm I’ve suffered from baseless falsehoods Randy and Nick have spread about me.

Randy and Nick repeatedly charge that I sent my email to students in violation of our email policies. I have informed that that this is not true and have asked them to correct the falsehood. At Randy’s request, I provided the authorizing email itself to him. The right to communicate with the student body was a hard fought victory in this institution. I followed the procedures precisely in seeking and receiving prior authorization. I did nothing wrong. The accusation that I violated our rules charges dereliction of my professional duties and false and is actionable as a per se libel.

Nick has not responded to my requests for correction. Randy has written to me that he had a good faith basis for making the charge, but he won’t share with me what it is. He insists that his accusations are nevertheless correct and refuses to make a retraction, despite receiving proof that my communication was authorized as required under our policies.

Accordingly, I am writing to correct the lie. Prior to this incident, I disagreed with Randy and Nick on many issues, but always assume they were honest and had basic personal integrity.

Gary

Professor Peller presumably has a different view of his colleagues’ honesty and personal integrity after this incident.

Less than 10 minutes later, another faculty member — described by a source as “a professor who is not Barnett or Rosenkranz, but who is respected among all the faculty and staff and definitely says what we’re all thinking” — sent this response:

From: [Redacted]
Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2016 4:38 PM
To: Gary Peller; All Faculty and Staff Subject:
Re: Mitigating Defamatory Assertions

Please, please, PLEASE stop. At the very least, please omit me from further communications.

Best,
[Redacted]