Justice at Last: Free Speech Conqueror Zach Wood '18 Continues to Unload on Adam Falk

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - The most famous and bravest Williams College graduate in a decade, Zach Wood '18, continues to pour fire and brimstone on Adam Falk, the school's disgraced ex-president.

In a new article in The College Fix, Zach shared with editor Jennifer Kabbany the motivations for releasing his newest story on the shaby treatment he received as a free speech activist at the hands of the Falk administration. 

In an email to The College Fix, Wood explained why he is telling this story now.
He said he chose to focus his book more on student backlash to free speech and the broader intellectual arguments at stake, but that more recently “powerful leaders have threatened and tried to intimidate and humiliate people I care about and I want to be fully involved in defending them and the values I believe in.”

“… I want to highlight why freedom of the press is personal for me, and underscore that I have a dog in the fight,” Wood said. “I am fully engaged and I am determined to win. Censorship has no place in our democracy.”

Wood said his piece in NAS aimed to highlight Falk’s “propensity to misrepresent the state of affairs.”

“Leaders who distort the truth like that tend to use intimidation to silence those who criticize them. I want to drill in the point that we should intensely oppose and resist these leaders,” Wood said.

You can read up on the full extent of Adam Falks devious efforts to halt freedom of speech at Williams College in Zach's recent article for the National Association of Scholars.

Zach Wood has had an outstanding experience since his graduation from Williams College. As you may know, he is an Assistant Curator at TED, a former columnist and Assistant Opinion Editor at The Guardian, and a former Robert L. Bartley Fellow at The Wall Street Journal. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, HuffPost, The Nation, The Weekly Standard, Times Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed. In 2017, he gave Senate testimony opposing the recent string of college speaker disinvitations and in defense of viewpoint diversity. He’s planning to attend law school in the not too distant future, according to Steven Hayward at the Power Line Blog.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.

Zach Wood '18 Free Speech Hero Drops Bombshell: A Senior Official at Williams College Threatened Me

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - I had a good talk with an extraordinary young man late last week, Williams College alumni Zachary R. Wood '18. As Williams Liberty readers may recall, Wood is the incredibly brave political science major who clashed with disgraced Williams College president Adam Falk over the issue of bringing conservative speakers to campus including the genial, but controversial John Derbyshire.

In a shocking new revelation, Wood reports that he was threatened by an unnamed Williams College official during the peak moments of the conflict. He writes: 

Speaking to the official I regularly confronted, I thoughtfully expressed my sharp focus on writing and exposing Adam’s attempts to keep me under his thumb.
The official — who would interrupt me frequently and bloviate to subvert my questions — planted both hands firmly on his desk, rose from his seat, and facing me, leaned forward.
“Zach, Adam Falk is the president of this college,” he said. “He’s the boss and I’ve spoken with him. You best be careful what you write about how you disagree with him. Is that clear to you?”
“I understand what you want me to do,” I replied.
After walking out of his office, I wrote down what he said to me and elected to write about his mistake at a later time. 

The stunning revelation appears in an article Wood wrote for the National Association of Scholars which was published on May 6, 2020. In time, I suspect there will be much more attention focused on his disturbing report. 

Apparently, the time to reveal this ugly situation is now appropriate. It comes at a time when the public is especially sensitive to the abuse of authority and the harsh treatment of political opponents, chiefly the treatment of General Flynn at the hands of the Obama administration. 

In Wood's article, he also discusses the petty mistreatment and disrespect he absorbed as a student at Williams College. He blames the ex-president Falk for turning him into a campus enemy. 

All in all, however, it looks like Wood has had the last laugh. Adam Falk is now gone. Remembered, it at all, as an immature failure, scarred by horrifying mistakes including naming a residence hall after an abusive alumni couple who mistreated their au pairs. Meanwhile, Zach Wood has become one of the school's most famous alumni and a sought after speaker on the topic of free speech. He is also the author of a well-received book, Uncensored: My Life and Uncomfortable Conversations at the Intersection of Black and White America, Penguin Random House, (2019).

Wood was a former Robert L. Bentley Fellow at The Wall Street Journal, and graduated from Williams in the spring of 2018 as a Herbert H. Lehman Scholar with a degree in political science. He currently works as an Assistant Opinion Editor of The Guardian.

The full article below the break.