In his story (“Law School warns students of strange man,” Oct. 18), Pedro Oliveira condones how some persons from the Law School have damaged the reputations of Alfred Fares and myself.

In my opinion, even if I had made the vague alleged comments attributed to me, I am still being punished for the alleged content of protected legal speech. Even if someone utters something hostile that falls under the extremely limited range of illegal speech, I suspect that it almost always must be directed against a single specific person, not a number of persons. Yet, according to Mr. Oliveira, my alleged comments were addressed to “some” people. In my opinion there is nothing in Mr. Oliveira’s story to indicate that I would have been doing anything other than exercising free speech and performing my civic duty of sharing my expertise of horror stories of the mental health industry last April, when media people were urging a national dialogue on this very topic.

If they have a compelling case against Mr. Fares or me, why do Ruth Robarts, UW Law School assistant dean, and UW Communications reportedly refuse to comment? Are they hiding something?

Nevertheless, I do thank Mr. Oliveira for quoting law student Nick Watt as perceiving neither him nor the Law School as being threatened. And I thank The Badger Herald for your many years of staunch support of free speech.

Richard Rathmann

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