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Notes -
Let's talk about the Stanford Law School situation that has gone on for a few days.
A Timeline:
The Federalist Society invited a judge, Kyle Duncan, to speak. 70 students emailed FedSoc to cancel the event. [https://freebeacon.com/campus/dogshit-federal-judge-decries-disruption-of-his-remarks-by-stanford-law-students-and-calls-for-termination-of-the-stanford-dean-who-joined-the-protesters/]("When the Federalist Society refused to cancel, students began putting up fliers with the names and faces of everyone on the board. "You should be ashamed," the posters read.")
Duncan was basically shouted down during his talk. Most in attendance were protestors to his speech, with people showing up with signs like "Duncan can't find the clit" and such. They accused him for ruling on cases that were against their beliefs, for example taking the right to vote away ("The students appeared to have little familiarity with Duncan’s jurisprudence. Some accused him of suppressing the voting rights of African Americans, Duncan said—only to cite a case in which Duncan had actually dissented from the majority.")
Duncan asked administrators to control the situation, and a DEI Dean went up to the podium and instead of controlling the crowd, read out a statement accusing Duncan of causing harm (video)
Duncan was escorted out by federal marshals
Dean of Stanford Law School + President of Stanford issued a joint apology letter to judge Kyle Duncan, and the Dean also sent an email to alumni
Now, the Dean of Stanford Law School is being targeted. She teaches Constitutional Law and her classroom white board was plastered with statements that argue for their 1st amendment rights and the heckler's veto (source). Some excerpts below:
This follows on the heals of similar kind of situations at Yale Law School (no.1 in the country, Stanford's usually no.2).
Don't have much to add here. I've seen a few student protests (but didn't go to UC Berkeley and wasn't present at any big ones). None were like this, but maybe law school is different. Also I wonder whether Stanford and Yale law schools sizes (300-500 law students, versus Harvard's ~2000 law students) means that it's easier to pressure everyone to join in on something. Being starred down by a large % of your classmates is probably not a fun experience, especially when you know most of them.
Any chance of consequences for the DEI Dean who threw fuel on the fire?
As uncomfortable as the “walk of shame” protest may be, I can’t really oppose it on principled grounds. The unprofessionalism of an employee joining in is worse. Judging by this unflattering snippet, she ought to be fired if she can’t be trusted to represent the university. She’s certainly not performing the traditional HR/DEI role of mitigating liability.
I know the default assumption is no consequences, but given the stance of the law dean—and the existence of a lot of wealthy and powerful backers—I wonder if this could be a Felicia Somnez situation.
I oppose the "walk of shame" on the grounds that it is intimidation.
My principle is that we should not seek the destruction of people that disagree with us (neither literal, social, nor professional destruction) unless we're willing to kill or die on the relevant hill. (In case this comes off as melodramatic, I don't mean this in the "I'm an internet tough guy" sense, but nearly the opposite: I think few hills are relevant in this way.)
Edit: "nor", not "or" and added parenthetical clarification.
This isn't the own you think it is.
The hill "Black Americans should be entitled to the full benefits of American citizenship in the way that white Americans already are" is a hill which many people are willing to kill or die on, painfully literally. As a society, America celebrates the people who killed and died on that hill (Martin Luther King is a de facto saint, and Abraham Lincoln is the secular equivalent), and calls the people who refused to do so Copperheads because they are as well-liked as venomous snakes. Glory, Glory Hallelujah and all that.
The people protesting Kyle Duncan hold the belief "stopping Federalist Society judges indoctrinating the next generation of elite law students with racist ideas is necessary to defend the gains of the Civil Rights movement" entirely sincerely. They are not obviously wrong - the conservative movement of which the Federalist Society is a part really is committed to the idea that locally powerful racists and State governments they elect have a right to do racisms.
I am a supporter of free speech (which goes beyond the specific protections of the First Amendment - the First Amendment says that the government must not violate free speech rights, but even if Stanford is not a government organisation, they still should not). This implies that I think that shouting down speakers is a bad tactic, and that stopping Kyle Duncan indoctrinating Stanford Law students would be achieved better by counterspeech. The wokists' disagreement with me on this point is empirical. Again, they are serious about this - there are good (but obviously insufficient, in my view) pragmatic arguments for censorship.
Yes it is, unless you believe these same people would be ok with being attacked in a similar way, as long as their opponents sincerely believe it would prevent negative social consequences.
The point I am making is precisely that American anti-racists have been willing to both kill and die for their beliefs, going back to the Civil War. So, historically, have American racists. The Civil War was violent. Reconstruction was violent. Redemption was violent. The Civil Rights movement was less violent, but the death toll made it into three figures. Even today, the political opponents of organised American anti-racism like to fly Gadsden flags, take AR-15s to political rallies, and talk about 2nd amendment remedies.
I don't think that the people protesting Kyle Duncan were okay with the idea of suffering physically painful consequences for their protest, but I don't think MLK was okay with being shot either. I do think that American anti-racist protestors are prepared for a physically painful response to their protests and think of it as an unfortunately necessary part of normal American politics. "Don't unleash goons on racists because they wouldn't do it to you" is not plausible to American anti-racists given the history of the last 200 years.
I am not American so I don't have a dog in this fight, but my impression is that the infamous Yonatan Zunger essay on tolerance is accurate as a description of the history of American race relations. The US status quo on black-white race issues is a peace treaty, but the "cold civil war" looks real. The fact that so few people on the centre-left were willing to condemn the George Floyd riots, and that most of the people on the centre-right who did condemn the January 6th riot are no longer competitive in a Republican primary, suggests that "there are no improvements to American race relations that would make large-scale political violence worth it" no longer commands the supermajority support it did ten years ago.
The American anti-racist left do not operate under a delusion that they can set a fire which only burns Red Tribers. (I agree that the specific group of elite law students who protested Kyle Duncan might, but if this kind of behaviour was restricted to law schools then it would be less of a problem). Yonatan Zunger is making a conscious, cold-blooded decision that America is close to the place where setting the normal kind of fire that burns everything it touches is worth it because the current iteration of the peace treaty isn't giving him what he wants and he thinks his side would win the next round of the war.
Anti-racists are conflict theorists who are playing to win. So are Federalist Society lawyers. I am a mistake theorist who (to the extent I can tell from overseas) sees two sides playing 1.5 tits-for-a-tat so every piece of noise gets escalated until it looks like a defect-defect equilibrium. The correct strategy against an opponent playing 1.5 tits-for-a-tat is to play 0.6 tits-for-a-tat until you get back into a cooperate-cooperate equilibrium, but the internal politics of large movements makes it impossible for them to play that strategy.
MLK wasn't shooting people, or advocating for people getting shot, though.
If my country goes to war, I'm probably not going to feel very guilty about shooting people, but likewise I'm not going to be morally outraged at them returning fire. On the other hand the entire progressive memeplex seems to be built around "it's ok when we do it", that's what I was getting at.
Can you give an example of even a small group using this strategy, and successfully avoided being taken over by conflict theorists?
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I will just say I'm not trying to "own" anyone. Moreover, "Black Americans should be entitled to the full benefits of American citizenship in the way that white Americans already are" is my own central example of a hill worth dying on.
Having said that, even if the students really think that's at stake here and are willing to (literally) fight for it, I would like that to be clearer and better understood.
Edit - turning down the heat.
Apologies - "own" was not as charitable as we are supposed to be on this forum.
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With all due respect, that is absolutely unhinged.
Er, proves too much. Is the walk of shame supposed to be social destruction? If so, it's a remarkably low bar. Especially when compared to literal destruction. Coordinated standing in lines is intimidating, but has no actual consequences, especially not irreversible ones.
For society to function, there has to be a gradient of offenses and responses. Lumping everything into the kill-or-die bucket excludes far too many reasonable options.
I wrote "we should not seek the destruction of people that disagree with us (neither literal, social, nor professional destruction)". Your response:
Were you intentionally dodging the substance here? I don't even have to speculate on their intentions with respect to social destruction: the law students are calling for their teacher (the dean of the law school) to be fired. If you don't agree they're trying to destroy her professionally and that the walk of shame was part of that, we don't have enough common ground to discuss this.
Presuming that was an oversight, I agree there has to be a gradient of offenses and responses. There's an entire universe of proportionately calibrated responses that don't involve silencing or attacking the speaker:
Ignore them.
Participate in the Q&A, ask sharp questions.
Organize a local event featuring a speaker or speakers providing a counterpoint.
Publish something critical of the ideas.
I'm aware that people often characterize boycotts, de-platforming, and collective shaming as an alternative to violence, but I think the opposite is true: these things all escalate towards violence. Their widespread currency fuels the volatile, scary environment in which we live. I would prefer to see our society establish different norms that would support engagement and follow the examples of Ira Glasser and Daryl Davis.
Edit: "walk of shame wasn't part of that" -> "walk of shame was part of that"
I waffled on categorizing it as social or professional. While I assume that some of the students involved were baying for professional consequences, as far as I can tell, they did so separately of the classroom demonstration. It wasn't an attempt to intimidate the school into firing her.
Where do you draw the line on destruction? Why is a silent protest violent while a counter-event is not? Sharp questions are an attempt to harm social standing. So is publishing criticism. It is literally the same argument trotted out to deplatform Yiannopoulos: oh, his speech was "literally a form of violence." That's why I say it proves too much.
When speech is directed towards organizing a person's destruction, it's over the line.
Another thing worth mentioning is that I'm promoting this as a normative idea, not a legal one, so I'm not trying to set up a technical test. I think de-platforming Milo was a stupid own goal, but to the extent that he tried to destroy people's lives, he sucked too.
Edit: I want to add that I'm not conflating speech with violence, a lame rhetorical habit. I'm saying that preventing someone from making a living or even just hurting their prospects pushes them into a corner; preventing them from having their say leads them to lose faith in dialogue, making violence look like the only solution; isolating them socially means they've got nothing to lose.
Noble as that sentiment may be, it remains nigh unworkable. Prison can be life-destroying, yet criminal prosecution is a necessary evil.
Tolerance of unpleasant speech is, too. I agree that there is a line--but it is the line of "clear and present danger," of "compelling public interest" and "narrowly tailored restrictions." It is the line set by centuries of jurisprudence that says "my right to swing my fist ends at your face." The silent student protest surely reflects an intent to harm, socially or professionally, the dean. But it is firmly on the right side of that line.
I'm sure I'm testing your patience, but I sense I haven't expressed myself clearly, so I'll try again. My position is at the intersection of The Spirit of the First Amendment and Be Nice, at Least Until You Can Coordinate Meanness:
I'm not trying to establish a legal standard. I think what the students are doing is and should be legal. But I also think it is appalling: trying to coerce someone into silence is callow, cowardly, and repulsive. That's an emotional reaction that I wish more people shared, because I think our society would be far better for it, but I don't really think I can make other people feel the same way.
However, it might be possible to convince people that harming or trying to harm people that disagree with you may be emotionally satisfying, but it is not an alternative to violence; instead it increases the chance of violence. Based on my observations and understanding of human psychology, I would say that de-platforming Milo, Trump, Charles Murray, & etc. have radicalized orders of magnitude more people than, e.g., 4chan or /r/TheDonald. I wish I could bring more neutral evidence to bear than my own priors, but I'm not sure what that would look like or who would listen.
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