JUICED AT STANFORD: On the free-speech double standard at Stanford Law School.
In an interview shortly after the fracas, Judge Duncan described what happened as “a staged public-shaming event.” He was right. It was worthy of what happened in Mao’s China. And it was clearly premeditated. Dean Steinbach was allegedly on hand to keep order. Instead, as Judge Duncan said later, “She did exactly the opposite.”
Instead of explaining to the students that they should respect an invited guest at the law school, . . . even one they might disagree with passionately, she launched into a bizarre (and already printed-out) monologue where she accused me of causing “hurt” and “division” in the law school community by my mere presence on campus. So, this had the effect of validating the mob.
Validating the mob.” At Stanford Law School, one of the best law schools in the country. Indeed, as the legal commentator David Lat wryly pointed out, with respect to its aggressive attack on fairness, civil comportment, and impartiality, Stanford had taken over Yale’s place at the top. Judge Duncan again: “This is a law school, for crying out loud. It’s supposed to be training students to enter a profession where respectful disagreement, even about supremely important things, is the most basic tool of the trade.” And remember, those students, abetted by a woman whose very office is an affront to impartiality, are destined to enter American society at the highest levels. How would you like to be represented by, or appear as a litigant before, people who pride themselves on responding to disagreement with snarling abuse and repudiation?
For its part, the Stanford administration emitted one of those non-apologetic apologies meant to save face without acknowledging responsibility and certainly without admitting to anything like remorse. It wasn’t much of an apology, but that didn’t stop hundreds of entitled Stanford brats from lining the halls of the law school to protest against Jenny Martinez, the dean, for apologizing to Judge Duncan.
What just happened at Stanford Law School marks a new chapter in the disintegration of foundational American institutions. Absent the rule of law, civil society cannot exist. The rule of brute force intercedes. The triumph of the therapeutic mindset does not entirely explain that disaster. But it has provided critical rationalizations and emotional fuel for the victory of a worldview in which law, argument, and reason itself are subordinated to the cold calculus of the revolutionary impulse.
They have sown the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind.