Students at Columbia Law School are taking a cue from the students at Stanford Law School. After members of the Federalist Society at Columbia met with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, progressive groups at the school threw a collective fit.Jonathan Turley writes at his blog:
“WTF is Wrong with You”: Columbia Center and Law Students Protest Meeting With Justice KavanaughColumbia University law students and alums are in an uproar over an Instagram post that showed students in the Federalist Society meeting with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at the Court. It would ordinarily be a singular experience for law students to spend time with one of the nine justices. That is not how it went over at Columbia where some are outraged by the meeting and Columbia’s posting the picture on its social media account. The Empowering Women of Color group announced it was “withdrawing our participation from Columbia Law School recruiting events.” Columbia’s own Center for Engaged Pedagogy, simply declared “WTF is wrong with you.”With the posting, Columbia offered the following description:
“On February 23, members of the Columbia Federalist Society (@clsfedsoc) visited the Supreme Court of the United States to engage in conversation with Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. During the visit, they learned about the human side of being a justice, the Court’s deliberation process, and how to be an effective advocate. Justice Kavanaugh also answered questions about a few of his most famous opinions.”
David Bernstein, writing at Reason’s Volokh Conspiracy blog, notes the absurdity of the complaint:
The students’ only tangible complaint, at least judging by the article, is that Kavanaugh was “credibly accused” of sexual assault. It’s been over four-and-a-half years since the allegation of misbehavior over 30 years earlier surfaced. Since then, no one, including those who were present at the time, has corroborated the initial allegation, nor, despite the best efforts of ambitious journalists, has anyone been able to substantiate any similar behavior by Kavanaugh in the ensuing almost-forty-years. It’s time to give up on the word “credibly” in this context. (And, fwiw, I’m pretty sure that the students would react differently to news of a meeting with a particular former president who is truly “credibly accused” of sexual coercion. Hint: his initials are WJC.)
Luke Rosiak of the Daily Wire points out that the administration even got involved in this:
Columbia Law Students Call Kavanaugh A Rapist, Egged On By Radical Academic Department…the most notable comments came from the official Instagram account of an academic office of Columbia University: The Center for Engaged Pedagogy, housed in Barnard College, Columbia’s women’s college.“WTF is wrong with you,” the Center commented.“Ah yes. Every day I wake up wondering what is the day in the life of someone who strips people’s rights away,” it said in a second post.The Center, which says it helps design curriculum and methods of teaching for all disciplines, promotes “Abolitionist Pedagogy Resources for Instructors, Staff, and Students,” referring to the idea the police and prisons should be abolished.“The CEP invites faculty, students, and staff to participate in a spring discussion group and incubation space focused on using abolitionist thinking to challenge our existing pedagogical practices and the way we live our lives. Participants will use abolitionist values to create personal and pedagogical praxes, come up with actionable plans toward a meaningful material transformation of the world,” it said.It refers students and staff to works like “CLOSE THE PRISONS! OPEN THE BORDERS!: How Abolition is Shaping Queer and Trans Politics,” and on March 24 pushed students to become political activists with a session focused on “Identifying projects and making commitments: How do we put our abolitionist frameworks into action?”“The ‘carceral state’ describes the governing and legal institutions, as well as the policies and practices that organize and enact capture, punishment, and policing. The carceral state normalizes gendered antiblackness and racial-colonial violence while simultaneously maintaining these as the foundational conditions required for social order and racial capitalism,” a teaching guide promoted by the Center explains.
FOX News reports that these student groups are now calling for protests, because if there’s anything higher education needs, it’s more protests:
Columbia Law students flip out over Kavanaugh event, call for protests: ‘White supremacist’After a group of Columbia Law School students took a photo with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in Washington, D.C., at least nine progressive student groups condemned the event and called on other students to protest, according to emails obtained by Fox News Digital…The school’s chapter of the National Lawyers Guild claimed that Columbia Law School platformed the Federalist Society and Kavanaugh, thereby normalizing “white supremacist, patriarchal violence in the law, legal education, and the everyday fabric of U.S. society.”The guild also wrote that the Federalist Society was “a symptom” of the disease of “patriarchy and the gender-based violence it facilitates.”Empowering Women of Color (EWOC), another student organization, called the original post, which depicted students and members of the Federalist Society smiling alongside Kavanaugh, “a terrifying stamp of approval” from the school.
Just like the students at Stanford, these Columbia Law students are sending a clear message. They will not tolerate opposing views or anyone who listens to them.
They think they are fighting fascists and don’t realize that’s exactly what they appear to be becoming themselves.
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