Posted by Randy Barnett:
I have been enjoying the sunny warm weather here in Tucson following
my talk at University of Arizona yesterday. Thanks to all the students
and faculty who attended. In the meantime, Saul Cornell sent this
message in response to my last post about the Joyce Foundation funding
of the Second Amendment Research Center at OSU (which he gave me
permission to post here):
Joyce did pay for the individual rights people who attended the
Fordham conference! As I explained in my last e-mail the first
e-mail exchange we had is no longer germane. After our exchange
Joyce and I had come to an agreement that the Center would not
adopt an official point of view about the Second Amendment. Joyce
was fine with the idea of conferences that would have multiple
points of view--The issue about funding that seemes to bother you
was a question about how to use my limited resources for any new
original research that my Center might undertake. When we had our
first e-mail exchange I was thinking mostly about short term
research fellowship support for people to come to my Center or
giving incentives for people to do new research on the topic. Given
the limited nature of my funding I abandoned that model. Instead, I
have chosen to put my money into the web site and conferences. The
web site does include the IR point of view as did Fordham. Are we
clear now?
Saul's message represents a positive development in this dialogue. It
is indeed clear now that Saul (and Joyce) accept the basic principle I
argued for in my earlier posts: academic institutions like OSU have a
different obligation to provide balance among legitimate viewpoints in
an academic debate than do think tanks, advocacy groups, or blogs.
Whether future programs sponsored by the Center at OSU are balanced
beyond a token or two will be evident for all to see. I look forward
to seeing seing, and perhaps even participating in, its future
conferences.
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