Memo From Michael: A Quick Note From Paris

I haven’t posted in a while, as I have been focused on some important personal matters, including a sad and ugly lawsuit my family filed against the Archer School for Girls and its head of school, Elizabeth English. (Those interested in status see JosephsonvsArcher.com. My hope to reform the law and assure that private school administrators can be held publicly accountable for egregious unprofessional, and probably illegal, conduct failed as the school’s army of lawyers successfully kept us out of court with what I think is an outrageously broad and unfair arbitration clause. Quite discouraging for someone who has had so much confidence in our legal system to sort things out and get it right. In any event, I hope to put this behind me and pursue reform in other ways.

Now I am in Paris (yes, in the midst of the terrorism attack). I am with one of my four daughters, Carissa, for a special daddy-daughter celebration of her 18th birthday (in September). Nine days in London and Paris. It’s truly great to have serious one-on-one time with this very smart and sassy young woman. I recommend one-on-one trips for all parents.

Of course, it is marred by the ugliness of the murder and maiming of those in the attack on the French satire magazine — 11 killed 11 wounded. It’s a big city and we didn’t see anything, but it was all over the news. We are living in scary times. I fear that in the end the need to protect the civil liberty of free speech — even very tasteless and unnecessarily offensive speech (and I am in favor of protecting even this sort of speech) — will end in more surveillance and security measures that will have their own very negative impact on civil liberties. The  tension between liberty and security is inevitable.

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