I appeared on the Shaun Thompson Show on AM 560 The Answer in Chicago on Wednesday night, August 9.
I haven’t been on Shaun’s show before, but hopefully he’ll invite me back because we had a good 18-minute conversation about a wide variety of issues, including my optimism or lack thereof, the progressive assault on the legal system, and a lot about education and students and faculty and administrators, and the Equal Protection Projects civil rights complaint against the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
This was a welcome change for me from having to talk about that person who dominates the news.
Here is the full audio, with a very partial transcript below.
Shaun Thompson (00:34):
I think the beauty of America, the principle of Americanism, is that law is the shield of liberty versus the weapon of tyranny. That’s the principle to me. That’s why I always had that certain confidence that a corrupt government would ultimately fail because law would be the shield of the individual. Now we’re watching it be used as the weapon. The good news is there are very smart people out there who understand the principle and the understanding of the enlightenment and what American law is supposed to be. My next guest is one of those people. He is Professor William Jacobson, the President and Director of Equal Protection Project, and founder of Legal Insurrection. Thank you so much, professor for joining me. How are you?
WAJ (01:19):
Good. Thanks for having me on.
Thompson (01:21):
Now I understand the principles, at least that’s the way I believe it to be. Yet we are living in a time where it has become very comfortable as a weapon of deliberate government, fascism and execution. You have had some success in taking it on. Tell me, do you think that we will win in the end? Will law become the shield of liberty the way it was intended, even though sometimes it’s bastardized?
WAJ (01:50):
I wish, I wish I could, you know, be the happy news warrior here, but I think it’s in doubt. I think the legal system is under assault from every direction. It’s being manipulated by doctrines like critical race theory and critical theory, which are very ends oriented. It’s being moved away towards group justice rather than individual justice. It hasn’t happened yet, so it’s not all bad news, but that is where things seem to be heading. And I think people need a wake up call that, if you look at the dissent in the Harvard case on affirmative action, by Katanji Brown Jackson. It could have been an article in any critical race theory course in a college, anywhere in the country. It’s group identity, it’s group outcomes, not individuals. And that’s not what it’s supposed to be….
Thompson (02:47):
And the idea in year 2023, I mean, I remember reading as a kid that humanity was in its in intellectual infancy in the 10th century. The reality is we’re still in that intellectual infancy. When you have, in the year 2023, the American government fully comfortable as using racism in the idea to correct racism, that took place hundreds of years ago. You filed a case recently that is important to many Americans, in particular, parents like me, who recently have written checks to colleges. What have you found? Tell us what it looks like. And ironically, I’m familiar with the university.
WAJ (03:27):
So we have filed a lot, but the most recent one is against University of Nebraska Lincoln. And it regarded a residency for a filmmaker, as part of their educational programming in conjunction with an outfit from New York City. But there was a catch to it. The filmmaker had to be black. A filmmaker could bring a second person in who was not restricted by race. But the University of Nebraska at Lincoln had a program where on their campus, there was an educational residency in filmmaking restricted to a single race. So we have filed a complaint about that. We have not heard from them yet. Eventually we will. But that’s the sort of thing that’s going on. And what amazes me is nobody over there with all their DEI and anti-discrimination bureaucracy, nobody thought to question, how can we do this? Bcause if you reverse the races, if you had a filmmaking spot there available, open only to a white person, there would be an absolute uproar. Nobody would’ve let that happen….
Thompson (08:20):
Do they need the American people anymore that we’ve seen this system kind of taken over into a money scheme between a government that has backdoor nationalized student loans and now have total control over everything. Not just who gets the money, but how much money goes out the door. And you’ve seen a massive uptick in the problem. Prior to the government taking over the loan business, there was a student loan debt of 600 billion. Now we’re closer to $2 trillion. Since the government has done it, they arbitrarily get to pick who pays and who doesn’t pay. How can we go back and attack the money of it? And should we, because the reality is they don’t really need the people’s consent anymore. They have this inside game, and you’re talking big money here.
WAJ (09:04):
What has happened in higher education is really one of the biggest travesties, and they’re trying to blame other people for it. But it’s really the university administrations. Every time the government would increase support for students through student loans, guess what? The universities would raise their tuitions. They would absorb it all. And the only reason the tuitions have become so outrageous in so many places is because it’s subsidized. It’s like any other product. If you don’t pay the full price of it, you’ll pay more because somebody else is paying for it.
Regardless of who you like for presidency, Ron DeSantis has a good idea, which is when students default on these loans, take the money back from the colleges, the colleges are the ones who got the money. So the students are essentially pass throughs. The students don’t keep the money. You give it to the student, the student gives it to the college, but the student is the one who’s expected to pay it back. Why don’t the colleges have to pay it back? I think that’s a great idea. And I think that would help lower the cost of education, not raise it, because all of a sudden the colleges would be on the risk, on the hook for their inflated prices, not the students and not the government….
Thompson (11:59):
You were in private practice for how long?
WAJ (12:02):
22 years.
Thompson (12:03):
22 years. So when you actually left private practice, you were probably middle aged, give or take, right?
WAJ (12:09):
Depends on your definition. I was 46, 47.
Thompson (12:13):
When you went back to college and you had practiced for 22 years and left law school, were you impressed with the intellect of the students in general?
WAJ (12:23):
Well, where I teach, I think they are smart. I think that they just go along to get along ideologically, you know, the prevailing wisdom at Cornell is not as radical as elsewhere, but it still leans heavily to the left. Not all the students agree with that, but they just want to get out. They want to get their degree, they want to get their law job. So I’m in a somewhat good position that the students I teach virtually a hundred percent of them get high paying jobs out of law school. But that’s not true everywhere. And it breaks my heart to see students graduating from law schools sometimes with $200,000 or $300,000 in debt, and they’re not going to make anywhere near enough to cover that. And they’re going to spend the next 30 years trying to pay it off. They shouldn’t be enticed to go to law school when they’re going to take on a debt that they can’t pay back….
Thompson (15:43):
Oftentimes, the greatest generations turn out to be the generations that were attacked early on in their lives. I’m optimistic that I think these kids that you’re dealing with today will have the benefit of being vindicated by history, and they will see the failures of the last recent couple of years. Do you have optimism when you look at these kids and you think that these kids will recognize right from wrong in the near future when they go into the real world and they’ll fight to make sure that what they live through is harder to happen to the next generation?
WAJ (16:16):
I do get some hope from the students. A lot of them have bought into the prevailing dogma, but a lot of them haven’t. A lot of them are just afraid to speak up. And that’s the biggest problem. So there is more diversity of viewpoint among students, at least the ones I interact with, than there are among faculty, frankly, or administrators. The faculty and the administrators are a monoculture. They all have one viewpoint. The students understand. They really do. A lot of them understand what they’re living through, whether they’re going to act on it in the future, I don’t know. But the students do give me some hope. The faculty and the administrators give me very little hope. And that’s why we’ve go to go around them.
Thompson (17:03):
Do they know and are you allowed to tell them that their professor is a radical who founded a website called Legal Insurrection, which I love the name. They must love that.
WAJ (17:14):
Oh, yeah, they know. I’m well-known. I’m the only one [faculty member] who is right of center really, publicly right of center. It’s very well known. A lot of the students are fans. A lot of the alumni are fans. Frankly, some of the faculty are, but they don’t want to admit it. So it’s an interesting way to live.
Thompson (17:35):
You’ve got a drive time radio host who’s also a fan of legal insurrection. I love what you do. I love the fact that you have the courage to continue to do it. Is there any way we can support you other than just going to the site?
WAJ (17:47):
We are a nonprofit. We are a 501(c)(3), donations are tax deductible. You can find the donate button at legalinsurrection.com or our Equal Protection Project, which is equalprotect.org. Obviously, donations are appreciated because we have to survive somehow and keep doing what we’re doing.
Thompson (18:08):
I love the fact you do it. Thank you so much for making time for me, professor William Jacobson. I appreciate you.
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