
The dean of undergraduate students at the University of Chicago has sent a very odd letter to the class of 2020—one that seems more designed to strike a blow in the culture wars than to edify incoming freshmen. It starts with a bunch of back-patting about how “earning a place in our community of scholars is no small achievement”—so far, so normal for a letter from a selective private school. Then it devotes a paragraph to “our commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression”: