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 dialog. 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 seeing, and perhaps even participating in, its future conferences.