"A Word Too Far."

This is the fifth and last of my NYT columns. (TimesSelect link.) It discusses this incident at Duke University Law School along with the incident at my law school which I wrote about earlier today. Excerpt:

Ironically, you have to care enough about engaging energetically with issues of race to run into this sort of trouble. It’s so much easier to skip the subject altogether, to embrace a theory of colorblindness or to scoop out gobs of politically correct pabulum. It’s only when you challenge the students and confront them with something that can be experienced as ugly — even if you’re only trying to highlight your law firm’s illustrious fight against racism — that you create the risk that someone may take offense.

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