I gave a speech at Yale Law School in the spring. From the outset, the atmosphere in the Gothic classroom was tight. The pupils who are slumped over in their seats appear exhausted. The room began to unwind as everything went smoothly enough. After witnessing me hug the assistant dean of students earlier in the day, a conservative student then went on a rant. More than 15 years ago, when I was a first-year law student at Harvard, we became friends. Despite the fact that she was a well-known liberal and I was the president of the Harvard Federalist Society, she frequently assisted me on campus. She encouraged me when the instructors and authorities chose me to speak to the graduating class during class day. We gathered at the White House a few years later to witness the confirmation of our former dean, Elena Kagan, as an associate judge of the Supreme Court. She had just complimented me on having a child during the height of the pandemic when I hugged her at Yale this spring.
Despite the fact that the law student was ignorant of all of this, he was angered by this example of non-ideological human interaction and charged me with “buddying up” with his foe.
Where did we come from?
prejudice, etc. According to the president of the Black Law Students Association, the phrase is equivalent to “cosplay/black face.” Others pointed out that the phrase was in the title of one of the most well-known progressive podcasts in the nation, Chapo Trap House, which is hosted by three white men and didn’t seem to provoke any negative reactions.
Within hours, the student received a call to meet with the assistant dean and diversity director of the institution. The administrators can be heard telling the student that his membership in the Federalist Society, a conservative student organisation that organises debates on campus, was “very triggering” to students and that the student would have faced more scrutiny if he were “a white person” during the conversation. (The pupil is a descendant of Native Americans.) They warned him that his ability to practise law would be suspended if he refused to accept responsibility. The officials sent out their own email to “condemn… in the strongest possible terms” the student’s use of “pejorative and racist language” after he declined to send the apology they had prepared for him and stated that he preferred to talk to any affected pupils.
A little over a month later, two additional students filed a lawsuit against the university, alleging that the same administrators had “blackballed [two] students of colour from career chances as reprisal for choosing to lie to support the University’s probe” into Professor Amy Chua. Chua was being looked into for reportedly breaking her agreement not to interact with students off campus after speaking in favour of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. However, several conservatives believed Chua was the target of the probe because she supported Kavanaugh and mentored conservative students in addition to others. A judge determined “sufficient evidence” last month that the plaintiffs’ chances of getting a clerkship may have been harmed by the law school’s conduct.
Liberal law students snuffed out a free speech gathering on campus in the spring. In a 2021 First Amendment Supreme Court case, Kristen Waggoner of the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and Monica Miller of the liberal American Humanist Association sided together. They came to talk on finding common ground between opposing ideologies.
We know from video evidence that the roughly 100 student protesters interfered with the ceremony because to the stances ADF has taken in instances regarding LGBT concerns. These students asserted their own right to free speech while obstructing either speaker from speaking. The protesters moved to the hallway after a professor told them to “grow up” and either be quiet or leave, where they continued to make so much noise that audience members were unable to hear the speakers, and even nearby classes and a faculty meeting were dispersed.
Students who went to the session to listen and not to protest claimed that they were “threatened and jostled” as they attempted to leave. Officers in plain clothes present at the event requested assistance from uniformed officers to assist the speakers in leaving the facility securely. At the time, it was against the law school’s policies to interfere with a university event, prevent participants from attending, listening to, or hearing it, or obstruct entry to a building. The demonstration did not lead to any student sanctions. Students were notified via email a week later that they could “swing by” the office to pick up a “Critical Race Theory T-Shirt” by the school.
