DEFEND THE REPUBLIC, DEFUND THE LAW SCHOOLS? Are Law Schools Now Woke Factories?
Students at three recent college events threatened violence against conservative speakers, along with the student groups that invited them to speak on campus.
This may be commonplace today, but what makes this hostility so much more shocking is that it occurred at colleges once considered eminent law schools: Georgetown University Law Center, Hastings College of Law at the University of California, and Yale Law School.
These future lawyers and their professors have shown us precisely what they think of free speech and open inquiry when the wrong people with the wrong views come to campus.
These identity politics-fueled attacks threaten to undermine legal education. As we have learned, nothing stays on campus anymore. Rank illiberalism in law schools will ripple through the profession and its institutions in due course.
“Instead of engaging with the panelists, a shocking number of Yale Law students hurled constant insults and obscenities at them and tried to prevent them from speaking and being heard,” the letter reads. “Our nation desperately needs the next generation of attorneys, legislators, judges, and Supreme Court justices to be marked by the character and values that undergird the American legal profession and a free society.”
To that end, the letter calls on the law school to “condemn the behavior of students who violated other people’s rights” and “take appropriate disciplinary actions in keeping with Yale’s free speech policies.” It also demands that the law school “retract and/or issue corrections to” its initial statement about the protest, which the law school claimed had not disrupted the event or necessitated police assistance. Both claims were subsequently debunked by audio from the event.
Governors and members of Congress weren’t the only ones to sign the letter. Ben Carson, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, added his name to the list, as did 24 state attorneys general and a number of academics and nonprofit leaders. All told, over 1,400 people signed.
Speaking truth to entitlement.