Op-Ed: Campus crybullies banish liberal education from American universities

This article originally appeared in The Washington Times on April 3, 2023

 

Campus shout-downs, disinvitations and academic cancellations are so common today that hundreds have been documented in recent years. For every incident that makes headlines, there are surely dozens more that do not.

Much has been written about Stanford Law School’s recent embarrassment, which stands out in a long parade of them because a diversity, equity and inclusion administrator joined students in verbally abusing a federal judge. With law students chanting and shouting to prevent his remarks, Judge Kyle Duncan of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asked a school administrator to restore order to the classroom. Instead of asking students to muster some civility or leave the lecture hall, Tirien Steinbach, associate dean for DEI, delivered prepared remarks accusing Judge Duncan’s work of “literally deny[ing] the humanity of people.”

Her conduct was so egregious that the university president and law dean issued a formal apology. That provoked one-third of the law school’s class to don masks and dress in black to protest the apology.

Why were students so angry? It was not the topic Judge Duncan was invited to lecture about — how appeals courts interact with the Supreme Court when precedent is in flux. Instead, the students were irate that he had once issued a judgment declining to force prison officials to use female pronouns in reference to a male prisoner locked up on child pornography charges.

The incident is a vivid reminder that “woke” ideology is a threat to collegiate learning as we know it. Here we have aspiring lawyers at one of the country’s most prestigious law schools refusing to learn about the federal court system from a federal judge because they disagreed with him on an entirely unrelated matter. Whether Stanford-educated lawyers who launch into hysterical theatrics when confronted by an idea they dislike will be much good at their jobs is a question potential employers should be asking.

Read full op-ed in The Washington Times