University bureaucrats will continue to flex their power, stifle learning, undermine the quality of professors, and shut down viewpoint diversity until faculty and students demand they be banished from campus.
"If you are at all curious about how the war on campus free speech has evolved since student arsonists torched the University of California at Berkeley in 2017, look no further than the angry mob of infantile Stanford law students who shut down a talk by Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan last week. Intolerant campus leftists have been shouting down speakers for years now, but what transpired at Stanford law school last week was special: The students’ effort to squash intellectual diversity was condoned and even enforced by a prominent university administrator.
"Ducan, who had been invited by the Stanford Federalist Society to give a talk titled “Covid, Guns, and Twitter,” was driven from the podium by Stanford Law School’s Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach.
"Due to heckling, Duncan asked an administrator to control the students, who were violating Stanford’s free speech policies. That’s when Steinbach stepped in, took the podium from Duncan, and personally chastised him with prepared remarks.
"Steinbach said of their behavior in her pre-written speech, “I’m glad this is going on here.” “The Stanford Review” reported that students at the talk were screaming and holding obscene signs, such as “Judge Duncan can’t find the clit.”
"While Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Stanford Law School Dean Jenny Martinez have apologized to Duncan, it appears neither the offending students nor Steinbach have been disciplined for their breach of university policy they’ve agreed to follow. ". . .
The Stanford Law School Culture, Not The Diversity Dean, Is The Problem (but I repeat myself) (legalinsurrection.com) Something is wrong with the culture at Stanford Law School, and many (most) law schools. Let’s address that issue.
" 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:". . .
. . ."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.". . .
Gutfeld: How Stanford Law became a daycare center
Douglas Andrews: Stanford Law Students Heckle Federal Judge | The Patriot Post . . . Steinbach stood up and gave a minutes-long lecture to Judge Duncan about the “harm” he’d caused on the Court of Appeals. As The Washington Free Beacon notes, “The students were particularly angry at Duncan for a 2020 opinion in which he refused to use a transgender sex offender’s preferred pronouns.”. . .
The tears of Tirien Steinbach | Power Line (powerlineblog.com)
Kelly deserves some kind of award for her gifted mimicry of Steinbach. I found it hilarious.
If Stanford cares about free speech, it must fire any administrator who actively encourages these unruly actions against it. Someone who is so eager, at the behest of an unruly mob, to shut down free speech, which Stanford itself considers “a bedrock principle for the law school, the university, and a democratic society,” has no place as a Stanford dean. . . ."She helped engineer chaos with her email before the event, delivered prepared remarks interrupting his speech, took the spotlight for herself, and has shown no remorse since."
"Indeed, we at the Review are concerned about what example this sets for these future lawyers, judges, and Supreme Court Justices."
