newYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
“Is that juice worth squeezing?” It was Tyrien Steinbach’s Words of Wisdom from the Stanford DEI Dean, which has gone down as one of the most shameful moments in modern legal education.
For years, free speech has been in free fall on our campus. Many faculty have effectively purged conservatives and libertarians from the academic echo chamber hierarchy. Conservative speakers are often blocked or canceled with the support of professors and students.
But what happened this week at Stanford shocked even those of us who have been challenging this orthodoxy for years.
Stanford Day Dean Slam invites federal judge to his face at campus event, asks if free speech is ‘worth it’
The Stanford Federalist Society has invited Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to speak on campus. It’s a great opportunity to hear the views of the country’s highest-ranking judicial officials. This was an opportunity to make important connections, as some students are likely to apply for prestigious administrative positions at Duncan College.
Students walking on the campus of Stanford University (Google Map)
However, liberal students decided that allowing a conservative judge to speak on campus was intolerable and tried to “de-platform” him by yelling at him. Another Conservative speaker was similarly canceled, in a reminder of an equally infamous event. Law students then objected to the fact that the campus police were present.
At the event, Duncan planned to speak on the following topics: The video shows that the students prevented Duncan from speaking and the judge asked for an administrator’s summons to allow the event to proceed.
Dean Steinbach then took the stage and instead of demanding that the students allow the event to proceed, Steinbach launched a babbling attack on the judge for asking to be heard despite such objections. Did.
General view of the Main Quadrangle and Hoover Tower buildings on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. (David Madison/Getty Images)
“I’m so uncomfortable here that I had to write something down,” Steinbach said. Is called.”
Domestic extremism bill would criminalize free speech, create ‘Ministry of Truth’, advocacy group warns
The next line is expected to be a denunciation of those who refuse to hear dissent in law school. Instead, it was free speech itself that was so stressful and painful for the law dean It turns out.
Steinbach declared, “For many people here, it’s offensive to say your work has caused harm.” I watered it down for the sake of it.
she continued. “Is the pain this causes, the division this causes worth? Is there anything really important to say about Twitter and guns and Covid that deserves this impact on the division of these people?”
These Top Universities Scam You And Your Kids As Awakening Madness Soars
This is a familiar argument for many of us in higher education. Freedom of speech is now often portrayed as harmful and threatening to the safety of communities. Steinbach suggested that it was Judge Duncan who should be ashamed of trying to speak out when others, apparently including himself, disagreed with his views.
A view of the Hoover Tower and Stanford University campus from Stanford Stadium. (David Madison/Getty Images)
Dean Steinbach then encouraged those who opposed Duncan to get out in protest. Many people did. It didn’t matter. The problem was coming to the event to confuse it. Importantly, Steinbach was asked to come forward as an administrator to represent the law school, not another protester.
The reaction to Steinbach’s shameful intervention was all too familiar. MSNBC regular Ellie Mistal defended a law student who blocked a judge from speaking. He called it conservative “victim” and whined just because students were expressing themselves.
Mystal is a “judicial correspondent” for The Nation magazine and a contributor to the popular anti-free speech site Above the Law. He is known for his racist attacks on black conservatives, calling the Constitution “garbage.”
Click here to get the opinion newsletter
Despite his inflammatory history, I would be the first to oppose conservatives yelling at Mystal or preventing him from speaking. It argues that it is an exercise of free speech to prevent people from doing so.
Cancellation campaigns are now commonplace in schools ranging from Yale University to Northwestern University to Georgetown University. Blocking someone else’s speech is not an exercise of free speech. It is truly the antithesis of free speech.
Nevertheless, faculty support such claims. Her CUNY Law Dean, Mary Lu Bilek, showed how far this trend has gone. When conservative law professor Josh Blackman was stopped from talking about the “importance of free speech,” Bilek argued that blocking speech about free speech was free speech. (Bilek later canceled himself and resigned).
Even the student newspaper declares dissenting speech outside the protection of free speech. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, professors actually rallied around a professor who physically attacked a pro-life advocate and destroyed a display.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Stanford must now decide whether the “juice” of free speech is worth the “squeeze” of the mob.
That sickening juice that Steinbach derided is what defines and sustains higher education.
Click here to read more about Jonathan Turley
