Robin Abcarian: Two universities that tried to squelch academic freedom have backtracked. Here's hoping that's a trend

I thought my mind was playing tricks on me when I first read that Kenneth Roth, who led Human Rights Watch for three decades, had been disinvited to a fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School's Carr Center for Human Rights.

That cannot be right, I thought: A man who has spent his adult life crusading against human rights abuses was judged to be a bad match for an institution devoted to advancing human rights around the world?

But yes, as it turned out, after Roth had accepted an invitation to a yearlong fellowship at Harvard during which he planned to