Perusing Facebook recently, I noticed a particularly surprising targeted advertisement. The ad, the tagline of which reads "Intimidation at Brandeis," was promoting an essay by writer Nat Hentoff, published by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. If you haven't guessed, Hentoff's essay, originally published in the Washington Times, focuses on the administration's response to allegedly racist remarks made by Prof. Donald Hindley (POL) and argues that Brandeis has abandoned its core values by "attacking" Hindley.The advertisement is a visual reminder that the case and the issues it raises are still on people's minds, even if the article it promotes is somewhat extreme. This paper presented an editorial expressing a view held by many students and faculty-that Hindley, who had never been accused of using offensive language before in his many years at Brandeis, was neither guilty of the accusations nor treated fairly by the administration, which acted unilaterally and still has yet to resolve the issue in an open, fair way.

I won't seek to rehash facts or arguments that have already been made. But the fact that there are now Facebook advertisements promoting essays critical of the Brandeis administration should be of great concern. Though the emotional state of students was ostensibly the administration's main concern, clearly it was not the only one.

In seeking to discipline Hindley, Provost Marty Krauss no doubt had the University's reputation and image as an open-minded, progressive institution in mind, and she seems to have decided that reports of a bigoted professor at Brandeis were to be avoided at all costs.

Rather than protecting the school's image, however, the administration's response has disturbed students and faculty and attracted the ire of free speech advocates like Hentoff. It is interesting to wonder whether, had the University conducted its investigation in an open, balanced manner, students would open Facebook to find advertisements criticizing "racist Brandeis professors." It seems that heavy-handedness on the part of administrators is as controversial as hate speech, at least when the evidence that hate speech occurred is so flimsy.

Unfortunately, the administration continues to push its own face-saving agenda rather than promoting discussion about the issues. As has been reported and editorialized upon in this paper, the Faculty Senate was recently addressed by an attorney of discrimination law at Krauss' request, a move perceived by most faculty and students as a response to last year's events. What has not been reported is that the lawyer, Daryl Lapp, has focused his career on defending colleges and universities against charges of wrongdoing and discrimination, according to his profile on his firm's Web site.

While this arguably makes him a qualified speaker on legal issues affecting universities, it also calls into question whether his address to the faculty is really just an explanation of discrimination law. Whether or not it was the administration's intent, tapping Lapp for the job suggests that the University is defending itself. Unilateral measures such as this hurt the administration's credibility and harm the University's reputation as a place that values diversity of opinion and fights injustice.