The wheel continues to turn on the shout-down of 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan at Stanford Law School. That disruption is an outgrowth of open hostility and incitement against conservative Supreme Court Justices that has now spilled over into academia even when a conservative appeals court judge appears.
Much of the focus has been on the antics of Stanford Law School Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach:
(full video here)
There are many calls for Steinbach to be fired, including by Judge Duncan, and there’s also a petition drive by Speech First.
I think the focus on Steinbach is a mistake, for reasons I articulated in my post Firing Diversity Dean Over Judge Shout-Down May Help Stanford Law School Escape Consequences Of Its Toxic DEI Culture. My point was that Steinbach was just doing what was expected of her as a DEI officer. She is the symptom, not the underlying problem, which is the DEI culture of intolerance.
That toxic culture evidenced itself after the shout-down. The Stanford Law School Chapter of the Federalist Society, which invited Judge Duncan to speak, got almost no faculty support (only two reached out privately), even though not just Judge Duncan but also Federalist students were targeted. Through its silence, the faculty sent a strong message that what happened was acceptable (had it been a liberal judge shouted down, you can be sure there would have been a faculty uproar.)
The Stanford Law chapter of the far-left National Lawyers Guild not only defended the shout-down, it promised to do the same to future conservative speakers. David Lat wrote:
In their Saturday email (also via the Free Beacon), the members of the NLG board declared their “firm support and admiration for every single person involved in planning or enacting the protest,” which “represented Stanford Law School at its best: as a place of care for vulnerable people, and a place to challenge oppression and bigotry in all their forms, including on the federal bench.”In addition to condemning what it saw as Judge Duncan’s “abhorrent” behavior, the NLG Board declared its “deep disappointment” in the official SLS response: “In veiled language, the law school threw its capable and compassionate administrators who were present at the event, and who interceded productively, under the bus, and expressed an intent to ensure that such disruptions do not occur again.” Based on the unapologetic tone of the NLG email, as well as the fact that no actions have been taken against either the student protestors or Dean Steinbach, I wouldn’t be shocked if such disruptions do occur again.
The Stanford Law Chapter of the leftist American Consitution Society also backed the disruption:
And in the lastest salvo, The Free Beacon reports that approximately one-third of the law school student body dressed in black in protest of the Law School Dean Jenny Martinez apologizing to Judge Duncan, making her walk a hallway gauntlet after they plastered her classroom with legally illiterate claims that shouting down a speaker is just their own free speech.
Hundreds of Stanford student activists on Monday lined the hallways to protest the law school’s dean, Jenny Martinez, for apologizing to Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan, whom the activists shouted down last week.The embattled dean arrived to the classroom where she teaches constitutional law to find a whiteboard covered inch to inch in fliers attacking Duncan and defending those who disrupted him, according to photos of the room and multiple eyewitness accounts. The fliers parroted the argument, made by student activists, that the heckler’s veto is a form of free speech.”We, the students in your constitutional law class, are sorry for exercising our 1st Amendment rights,” some fliers read. As a private law school, Stanford is not bound by the First Amendment, though California state law does apply some First Amendment protections to private universities….When Martinez’s class adjourned on Monday, the protesters, dressed in black and wearing face masks that read “counter-speech is free speech,” stared silently at Martinez as she exited her first-year constitutional law class at 11:00 a.m., according to five students who witnessed the episode. The student protesters, who formed a human corridor from Martinez’s classroom to the building’s exit, comprised nearly a third of the law school, the students told the Washington Free Beacon.The majority of Martinez’s class—approximately 50 students out of the 60 enrolled—participated in the protest themselves, two students in the class said. The few who didn’t join the protesters received the same stare down as their professor as they hurried through the makeshift walk of shame.”They gave us weird looks if we didn’t wear black” and join the crowd, said Luke Schumacher, a first-year law student in Martinez’s class who declined to participate in the protest. “It didn’t feel like the inclusive, belonging atmosphere that the DEI office claims to be creating.”Another student in the class, who likewise declined to protest, said the spectacle was a surreal experience. “It was eerie,” said the student, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. “The protesters were silent, staring from behind their masks at everyone who chose not to protest, including the dean.”Ironically, the student added, “this form of protest would have been completely fine” at Duncan’s talk on Thursday.
David Lat’s sources put the number of students in the gauntlet at one-third of the first year class, not one-third of the entire school (so under 100, not 100s), but clearly there was substantial participation.
These students thinking that it is protected “free speech” to prevent someone else from speaking reflects how uneducated these law students are. Ken White, clearly no fan of Judge Duncan, writes about the students’ position:
However, shouting down is not protected by the First Amendment. Neither is pulling the fire alarm, setting off an airhorn, or making bomb threats to stop the speech from happening. You couldn’t pass a law that said “no shouting down conservative speakers” or “no shouting down political speakers,” because those wouldn’t be content-neutral, but you can absolutely prohibit disrupting someone else’s exercise of free speech so long as you do so in a content-neutral way.
Firing the Diversity Dean is a distraction and deflection. Let’s keep her front and center, let her be the face of Stanford Law School for all the world to see. Because she reflects the culture there.
Something is wrong with the culture at Stanford Law School, and many (most) law schools. Let’s address that issue.
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