Tea Party to Host Prof Known for "Water Buffalo" Case

University of Pennsylvania History Professor Alan Charles Kors will speak on "Can There Be An After Socialism?" as part of the monthly meeting of the Lehigh Valley Tea Partyon Friday, February 3 at the in Palmer Township.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Program will run from 7 to 9 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Civil libertarian Kors is the author of "The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses." He opposed college "speech codes" such as harassment policies and student conduct codes that limit First Ammendment rights.

Copies of Kors' book will be available for purchase at the program.

Kors is known for his role in "water buffalo" incident at Penn in which a student shouted "Shut up, you water buffalo" to a crowd of mostly black sorority sisters creating a ruckus outside his dorm. University officials charged the student, Eden Jacobowitz, with violating the school's racial harassment policy.

Jacobowitz turned to Kors as an advisor as he explained that he used the term "water buffalo" as taken from a Hebrew slang word for a loud and rowdy person, not a racial epithet. The university eventually dropped the charges.

Kors has received two awards for distinguished college teaching and numerous awards for his defense of academic freedom. He has also written and lectured widely on the assault upon liberty and freedom of conscience on America's campuses. In 2005, he was awarded a National Humanities Medal. In 2008, he was awarded the Jeanne Kirkpatrick Prize for the Defense of Academic Freedom, and he received the Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

Kors has published extensively on the conceptual revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, and produced three taped series on the period for The Teaching Company. He was editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (four volumes, 2002).

He is married with two children and lives in suburban Philadelphia.