"Worse, law students are supposed to be preparing for the legal profession and the justice system, where words, debate, and argument should replace physical threats, intimidation, and incivility. Yet law students increasingly reject discourse in favor of shout downs."
"Last week, UCLA law students shouted profanities, held signs with graphic obscenities, and booed a Department of Homeland Security attorney invited to campus to speak by the law school’s Federalist Society chapter. Video shows a crowded hallway where students scream at the lawyer when he arrives and then continue howling and jeering in the lecture room, which has perhaps 50 students, plus a few older attendees as well as security guards in back. Students also hold up vulgar signs—“F–k You Loser” “How’s Trump’s C–k Taste?”—and make vulgar gestures while grinning and giggling. They slouch, put their feet on desks, stand up and sit down repeatedly, and let their phones ring to disrupt the presentation. The older audience members look annoyed and exasperated.
"What a zoo.
"This circus atmosphere sadly confirms the anti-intellectual wasteland that much of American higher education has become, with law schools no exception. Many seem more fit for spoiled toddlers than serious students.
"Unfortunately, the temper tantrum shout down seems almost a new normal in much of American legal education: In 2022, law students at Yale blew horns, stomped their feet, and shouted obscenities at Alliance Defending Freedom counsel Kristen Waggoner and Yale law professor Kate Stith, who was trying to moderate the event—which was on free speech, no less—and who told the students to “grow up.” Then again, in 2023, Judge Kyle Duncan of the Fifth Circuit tried to speak at Stanford Law School but was similarly heckled by angry students—who called him a racist, of course—and was then even scolded by a school administrator who not only did not bring order but said shewas uncomfortable with the judge’s presence, not with the presence of angry, frothing students. Similar law school incidents have occurred at Cornell, Georgetown, the City University of New York, and the University of California Hastings.
"When will Congress and state legislatures stop funding these insane asylums masquerading as places of learning?" . . . More...
Teresa R. Manning is Policy Director at the National Association of Scholars, President of the Virginia Association of Scholars, and a former law professor at Virginia’s Scalia Law School, George Mason University.
"Harvard’s gatekeepers tout resumes but hide convictions, revealing an elite more committed to ideological conformity than to intellectual honesty."
. . . "J. B. Pritzker (the brother of a Board of Overseers member) called Trump a “wannabe dictator.” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., described the Trump administration as a “totalitarian regime.” He also called legislation tied to Trump a “moral abomination.” Former President Joe Biden said, “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” Liz Cheney, former congresswoman from Wyoming, said, “There has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” Senator Bernie Sanders, Socialist, Vt., called Trump “the most dangerous president in modern American history.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called Trump “a domestic enemy of the Constitution.” And of course, there are more.
""Can America survive if prominent politicians keep spreading that sort of hate throughout the land?" . . .
Daniel Oliver (H ’61–64) is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of the Education and Research Institute and a Director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in Pasadena, Calif. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was Executive Editor and subsequently Chairman of the Board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.
"Dartmouth College president Sian Beilock is not afraid to say why she believes American universities have lost the public’s trust. (Caleb Kenna/The New York Times/Redux)
"Better late than never, the toniest institutions in higher education are coming around to the realization that “echo chambers do not produce the best teaching, research, or scholarship,” as a Yale University report put it earlier this month. Today, we have two looks at the Ivies’ about-face." . . .
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