better able to articulate and defend nuanced positions. The same is true of liberals and everyone

4.2.12 WC: 191694 better able to articulate and defend nuanced positions. The same is true of liberals and everyone else. I always play the devil’s advocate, challenging every view, questioning every idea, pushing every opinion. In doing so, I learn a great deal from my students. My classroom is truly a marketplace of ideas. This should not be surprising, considering my life-long commitment to freedom of expression and the widest exchange of views, as I describe in the next chapter. When I was offered the job at Harvard at age 24, I knew that I was qualified to teach theoretical subjects, but I worried about my lack of real world legal experience, since I had never practiced law. (One summer at a law firm between my second and third year at Yale does not a practitioner make.) Unlike some academics, my Brooklyn upbringing gave me a practical bent of mind— “street smarts”—but I craved some real world experience. I looked for opportunities to become involved in cases that would provide a smooth transition from theory to practice. Within a few years of beginning my teaching career, I found a natural transition in the form of First Amendment cases challenging governmental censorship. 83 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017170