I have posted twice this year about the persecution of  Prof. Lawrence Connell, a tenured associate professor at Widener University School of Law in Delaware, but let me summarize the story for you, lets you missed the original post.

Connell is a criminal law professor, and is adept at concocting memorable hypotheticals to illustrate principles of law, often using celebrities and other people well-known to the students as characters. In one class, he illustrated the dilemmas in determining the crime of attempted murder with this hypothetical:

“The Dean has threatened to fire me if she comes to school one more time and finds that I have parked in her designated parking space. Upset about the possibility of losing both my job and the parking space, I bring my .357 to school, get out of my car, put the .357 into my waistband, walk to the top floor where her office is located, open the door to her office, see her seated at her desk, draw my weapon, aim my weapon, and fire my weapon directly into what I believe to be her head. To my surprise, it’s not the Dean at all, but an ingeniously painted pumpkin — a pumpkin that has been intricately painted to look like the Dean. Dick Tracy rushes in and immediately wrestles me to the ground. I am charged with the attempted murder of the Dean.”

Good hypothetical. But some of Connell’s students complained that the hypo communicated violent attitudes towards women and blacks, since the Dean, Linda Ammons, is both female and black. Continue reading →