Peppery provocation - suspension of Temple law school student Lincoln Herbert

National Review, Sept 26, 1994 by Ramesh Ponnuru

PHILADELPHIA "THAT place is an armed camp," declares my cabdriver as we leave Temple University. "You can't blame them, though. The homeless people around here are pretty rough. Very aggressive."

By the end of his third year at Temple's law school, Lincoln Herbert had been mugged three times. On May 3 he was' walking back to the law school after a late dinner to resume studying for his final exams when, he says, a disheveled stranger demanded money from him. "I said, |Go away, leave me alone,'" he recalls. "He said, |Make me.' And he said that he had a knife." Mr. Herbert sprayed the man with pepper gas and ran into the law building. The stranger followed him in, shouting threats, so Mr. Herbert sprayed him again. A few university employees who were attracted by the noise inhaled some of the pepper gas, and one of them, an asthmatic, went to the hospital the next day.

Two days later, dubbing Mr. Herbert "a clear and present danger to the safety of individuals in the Law School community," Dean Robert Reinstein suspended him and said he would seek to expel him permanently. He claimed that Mr. Herbert had "committed an act of violence which harmed several of our employees and a stranger in violation of the school's conduct code." Mr. Herbert maintains that the dean seized upon the incident as an excuse to get rid of a troublesome conservative activist. Mr. Reinstein claims that Mr. Herbert "attacked without provocation both outside and inside the law school" and denies the charge of political bias.

But it's easy to understand how Mr. Herbert--whose political activities have taken up so much of his time that he had to extend his studies by an extra year--could get on the dean's nerves. Mr. Herbert founded Temple's chapter of the Federalist Society and has written for the law school's newsletter a column called "Notes from the First World." After being voted out as president of the Federalist Society last year, he organized the Western Heritage Society.

"The purpose of the organization," he says, "is to open up for public debate all the issues that are important to the survival of our culture. We don't think there should be issues of that magnitude which can only be discussed at the dinner table but not in public." The society has sponsored lectures blasting race-norming, immigration, and Brown v. Board of Education, putting up argumentative posters around campus to promote the events.

In April Dean Reinstein wrote a note "to the law school community" accusing the Western Heritage Society of having "posted messages of vitriol and hatred in the building. Their apparent purpose is to verbally assault individuals and groups within our community .... The members of the Western Heritage Society should not be left in doubt that the practice of expressing hate speech is reprehensible."

Mr. Herbert charges that Dean Reinstein's disciplinary moves are an attempt to decapitate his organization. "We're singled out because we are a serious, articulate, intelligent ideological challenge to the administration and the dean's political agenda," he says.

The walls of the society's tiny office (the smallest on campus, Mr. Herbert complains) display columns by Jeffrey Hart, Pat Buchanan, Samuel Francis, and Joseph Sobran, along with covers from recent issues of Chronicles and several anti-immigration tracts. (One explains that "rude and arrogant" Indians are "colonizing New Jersey towns.") A letter recounts Mr. Herbert's outrage at the refusal of a local Kinko's to make copies of an "offensive" poster he had written.

The Western Heritage Society does not appear to worry much about giving offense. One of its posters singles out students by name, describing one as "head dyke." Another refers to Temple Law Students for Lesbian and Gay Rights as "the local Pederast Lobby" and "the Soddomites" (sic). A cartoon below the text expresses the society's opposition to the enlistment of gays in the military. The cartoon cannot be reprinted in NATIONAL REVIEW; suffice it to say that it involves plays on the terms "cockpit" and "joystick." Mr. Herbert says of the poster, "Some so-called conservatives were offended by it." Comments Stephen Balch, head of the National Association of Scholars: "He is vocal. He has strong feelings, it's quite clear. He makes no bones about where he stands."

Mr. Herbert has often encountered opposition from Republicans who find him too divisive and whom he finds too liberal. He says two officers of the College Republicans even went to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute to ask it to stop funding the Western Heritage Society. Chris Long, ISI's vice president for programs, would not comment on the matter, but he did say that Mr. Herbert "has been obnoxious and rude to many people on our staff. No doubt his personality is the source of some of his problems at Temple."

Still, Mr. Long agrees that the administration has treated Lincoln Herbert unfairly. He has been excluded from campus without a hearing (he was not even allowed back to take his exams), and his lawyer, George Bochetto, complains that the university has been reluctant to release documents. As of early September, an expulsion hearing had yet to occur; each side blames the other for the delay.