In March of this year, an unruly mob of student activists shouted down a Yale Law School campus event organized to promote free speech and the free exchange of ideas.
Now the school has shut down a listserv used by student activists to organize that incident and others.
Aaron Sibarium reports at the Washington Free Beacon:
Yale Law School Axes Student Listserv That Energized Protests and ScandalsAfter a year of high-profile scandals, Yale Law School is retiring an all-student listserv that became a breeding ground for progressive activism and online pile-ons, citing the value of “face-to-face” interaction.If students want to “debate important questions,” the dean of Yale Law School Heather Gerken announced in an email on Wednesday, they can post on a physical bulletin board in the law school’s hallway.”Debate and dialogue are the touchstones of an academic institution,” Gerken said. The new forum will force students to “take time to reflect before posting, a habit that lawyers and members of a scholarly community must practice.”Gerken’s announcement caps an annus horribilis for the Ivy League law school, which has seen near-nonstop scandals since 2021. The listserv played a role in many of those scandals: It facilitated a week-long pressure campaign against the Yale Law Journal over its alleged racism, as well as a public shaming campaign against Trent Colbert, the second-year law student who used the term “trap house” in an email. It also helped gin up outrage about a bipartisan panel on civil liberties hosted in March, which ended up needing police protection after hundreds of protesters disrupted the event.”The listserv was a cesspool,” said Zach Austin, who served as the president of the Yale Federalist Society this past year. “Dean Gerken’s rhetoric is spot on: I hope students, left and right alike, take it to heart.”
The listserv was also connected to the targeting of a conservative student in October of 2021:
The listserv’s demise comes just weeks after a controversial administrator, Ellen Cosgrove, retired from Yale Law School, prompting speculation that Gerken was taking steps to avoid a repeat of the scandal-filled year. Cosgrove, the law school’s associate dean, sat idly by while protesters disrupted the March panel. A few months earlier, she and another administrator pressured Colbert to apologize for his “trap house” email, an episode the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus likened to Mao’s cultural revolution.
Yale Law has become such a hotbed of left-wing activism that some federal judges are now avoiding hiring law clerks from the school.
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