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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34408 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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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:

  • When Martinez’s class adjourned on Monday, the protesters, dressed in black and wearing face masks that read "counter-speech is free speech," stared silently at Martinez as she exited her first-year constitutional law class at 11:00 a.m., according to five students who witnessed the episode. The student protesters, who formed a human corridor from Martinez’s classroom to the building’s exit, comprised nearly a third of the law school, the students told the Washington Free Beacon.

  • The majority of Martinez’s class—approximately 50 students out of the 60 enrolled—participated in the protest themselves, two students in the class said. The few who didn’t join the protesters received the same stare down as their professor as they hurried through the makeshift walk of shame.

  • "They gave us weird looks if we didn’t wear black" and join the crowd, said Luke Schumacher, a first-year law student in Martinez’s class who declined to participate in the protest. "It didn’t feel like the inclusive, belonging atmosphere that the DEI office claims to be creating."

  • The Stanford National Lawyers Guild said Saturday that Martinez had thrown "capable and compassionate administrators" under the bus. The law school’s Immigration & Human Rights Law Association issued a similar declaration on Sunday, writing to its mailing list that Stanford’s apology to Duncan "has only made this situation worse." And Stanford Law School’s chapter of the American Constitution Society expressed outrage that Martinez and Tessier-Lavigne had framed Duncan "as a victim, when in fact he himself had made civil dialogue impossible."

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.

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.

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.

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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