By now you’ve heard me go on and on and on how the shout-down of 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan at Stanford Law School revealed in many ways a deep cultural problem that went far beyond the antics of Stanford Law School Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach. Assessing the situation, I concluded that The Stanford Law School Culture, Not The Diversity Dean, Is The Problem (but I repeat myself).
Audio of the shout-down covering the time period prior to the start of the video showed that the disruption was as bad if not worse than expected.
But it gets worse. Yesterday Ed Whelan tweeted:
As Judge Duncan was on his way to the classroom for the event, students lined up on both sides of a narrow hallway yelled vicious things at him, including “we hope your daughters get raped.”Stanford Fed Soc president Tim Rosenberger just revealed that on podcast recording.
The podcast was not live at the time of the tweet, but is now. You should watch the whole thing, I’ve marked it to start just before Rosenberger made the statement quoted by Whelan, describing how Judge Duncan walked through a gauntlet of protesters to enter the classroom:
‘They were … yelling pretty horrible and personal things. They hoped that his daughters would be raped because he had help [inaudible] through Dobbs ‘ [the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade]
Judge Duncan, in an Op-Ed this afternoon in The Wall Street Journal described the experience, including the shouts about his daughters being raped, My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School (emphasis added):
“When I arrived, the walls were festooned with posters denouncing me for crimes against women, gays, blacks and “trans people.” Plastered everywhere were photos of the students who had invited me and fliers declaring “You should be ASHAMED,” with the last word in large red capital letters and a horror-movie font. This didn’t seem “collegial.” Walking to the building where I would deliver my talk, I could hear loud chanting a good 50 yards away, reminiscent of a tent revival in its intensity. Some 100 students were massed outside the classroom as I entered, faces painted every color of the rainbow, waving signs and banners, jeering and stamping and howling. As I entered the classroom, one protester screamed: “We hope your daughters get raped!”“
Judge Duncan went on to describe the heckling and the disruption, if you’ve listened to the audio and seen the video, you’ve heard what it was like.
But I’m circling back to the cultural problem at Stanford Law School. It’s not one DEI Dean, or one student wishing rape upon the daughters of someone who disagrees with them as to whether abortion is a federal constitutional right or something to be decided by the states (which is all Dobbs did, was send it to the states).
From everything the Judge Duncan shout-down reveals, there is a deep culture of intolerance at Stanford Law School. That would be bad enough, but unfortunately it is a glimpse into the future of the court systems and prosecutors offices, which will be stocked with many of the Stanford Law Students howling at Judge Duncan. It may be too late to recover the culture in law schools, but support needs to be given to the brave conservative students who themselves run the gauntlet every day.
It’s also why the judiciary matters so much, and the battles over judges are so important. We don’t want the law students shouting down Judge Duncan and wishing rape upon his daughters on the bench, but no doubt many will end up there long after this incident is forgotten.
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