"Is the Left for free speech and an open exchange of ideas, or is it not?"
"Lamenting the astonishing success of the activist Left’s century-long Gramscian march through America’s major institutions is, at this juncture, old hat. Still, there have been a few recent powerful examples, coming in quick succession, illustrating the extent to which leading liberal institutions of civil society have been captured by far-left activist wokesters who take opportunistic advantage of their groups’ venerable reputations in an attempt to repurpose them for dubious ends.
"Take, for example, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, once one of the nation’s leading lights of the civil rights movement, which in recent decades has increasingly degenerated into a cesspool of grievance politics, intersectionality, race-tinged hucksterism, and crass Democratic Party politicking. This week, the Florida chapter of the NAACP asked its national board to issue a travel advisory against visiting the Sunshine State due to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R-FL) recent moves to, among other things, extirpate “diversity, equity and inclusion” racialist indoctrination from public universities and convince the College Board to drop asinine leftist indulgences such as “queer studies” from its model AP African American Studies curriculum. As DeSantis aptly summed it up at a press conference, when asked about the NAACP tiff: “What a joke!”
"Consider also the American Civil Liberties Union’s steady descent, in recent years, away from the free speech absolutism that was long a hallmark of the organization and which led it, back in 1978, to legally argue on behalf of neo-Nazi provocateurs who wanted to march in the heavily Jewish suburb of Skokie, Illinois. Not so much nowadays, as a 2021 New York Times headline put it: “Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the ACLU Faces an Identity Crisis: An organization that has defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan is split by an internal debate over whether supporting progressive causes is more important.”
"The ACLU’s “internal debate” over whether to err on the side of free speech or progressivism was on full display recently at Stanford Law School. The school’s associate dean for DEI, Tirien Steinbach, who served as a high-ranking local ACLU official prior to her diversitycrat sinecure, was caught on video asking the ludicrous (and now viral and frequently “meme”-d) question of whether the “juice” of the heavily protested Judge Kyle Duncan’s right to speak freely was “worth the squeeze” of the “harm” his mere presence allegedly caused congregated students’ snowflake sensibilities. I also have some personal experience in the modern ACLU’s resistance to open debate: A few years back, I tried to organize a written debate on the hot-button topic of biological male (“transgender women”) athletes competing in women’s sports, and was rebuffed by the ACLU — an organization that has a whole section on its website dedicated to “transgender rights.' ”. . .
. . ."But someone who had a big part to do with it was the moron and toxic blight at Stanford whom they call the Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Her name is Tirien Steinbach; I do not know whether she is named for the fictional dwarf by that name. At least a Lannister always pays his debts. These DEI deans are malignancies on the body academic, absolute poison. They get paid boatloads of money collected from overblown tuition, which saddles students and their parents with debt for life, to provide an ostensibly valuable service that my law degree, rabbinical degree, advanced history degree, and other educational attainments still leave me unable to fathom. ". . .
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