I’m cautiously encouraged that Stanford has promised to implement some form of training for students on the virtues of civil discourse. Let’s say the quiet part out loud. The mob came to target me because they hated my work and my ideas.
Judge Kyle Duncan
DEI activism (diversity, equity and inclusion) was exposed as madly anti-American at Stanford Law, where liberals crashed a Federalist Society event and heckled the guest speaker so loudly, interested listeners could not hear him. It’s madness when future lawyers don’t want to hear a sitting judge. It’s uncivil when the administrative “observer” tells the judge his rulings caused “harm” to the hecklers and were an “absolute disenfranchisement of [their] rights.”
That’s just the way it is when diversity professionals think conservatives never have anything worth hearing. But, that’s not the way it’s going to be now that Stanford’s cancel culture blew up in its face. Already, the winners and losers are plain to see.
A clear winner is the Federalist Society for hosting the event to advance the “open exchange of ideas essential to life and learning” touted on their school’s website. A conservative judge could speak at their event because Stanford’s Statement on Academic Freedom protects the right to “inquiry and peaceable assembly, free from internal or external coercion.”
Another winner is Judge Kyle Duncan, who tried to speak to future lawyers about the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, even after the mad-liberal ambush had begun. As a civic leader, he should talk about the real world to students, and a federal judge should not wilt when yobbish punks hurl insults. The videos prove how vulgar his antagonists were, but Duncan gave as good as he got (without the X-rated insults). Well done, sir!
The surprise winner is Students for Fair Admissions, whose case is before the Supreme Court. Their argument is twofold: (1) DEI policies are intolerant of certain views and backgrounds, and (2) DEI administrators foster contempt for First Amendment protections. SFFA claims strangling diversity of thought is ruining higher education, and the hecklers at Stanford Law probably influenced the court’s 6-3 conservative majority.
Those six justices just happen to be Federalist Society members. After watching one of their own abused in the name of “diversity” at Stanford, they should question the efficacy of affirmative action at Harvard, where DEI policies reputedly teach “students new ideas and ways of knowing,” while also purportedly promoting “the tolerance and mutual respect that are so essential to the maintenance of our civil society.”
If that’s true, the Harvard Independent wouldn’t report “international students had to re-adjust their vocabulary, learning what was and was not permissible to say,” an international student wouldn’t request anonymity to say “cancel culture here was definitely a big culture shock,” and a Harvard Crimson faculty survey would not have found “only 1 percent of respondents stated they are ‘conservative’ and no respondents identified as ‘very conservative.'”
By far, the biggest loser is Stanford’s associate dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Tirien Steinbach, whose offensive behavior has her currently on leave. She was asked to “observe” and sent a pre-event email accusing Judge Duncan of causing “upset and outrage.” The “de-escalation techniques in which [she’d] been trained” included – in her view – reading aloud prepared comments excoriating Duncan (source: WSJ). She’s part of the problem.
She was called out by Stanford Law’s dean Jenny Martinez: “staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so, and instead intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.” The dean also wrote that “the First Amendment does not give protestors a ‘heckler’s veto’ because settled First Amendment law allows restrictions on heckling to preserve the countervailing interest in free speech.”
The hecklers were also called out for violating the “collegial culture” touted on Stanford Law’s website. Martinez has initiated a “mandatory half-day session for all students on the topic of freedom of speech and the norms of the legal profession” and “mandatory educational programming” to prevent violations of Stanford’s free-speech policies re-occurring. Well played, madame!
With 2024 looming, it’s time to say the quiet part out loud: look at who’s running DEI and what they post on social media. My Google Image search of “dean of diversity, equity and inclusion” turned up almost no white men, and those five pages of results led to even more pages of anti-caucasian, anti-male, and anti-religion posts (source: Twitter). The guess here is that most, if not all, DEI deans are too insular and too coercive to qualify as inclusive or protective of free speech.
It might feel good to punch up at America’s 311,000,000 heterosexuals, 232,000,000 whites, 210,000,000 Christians, and 162,000,000 men, but societal change requires emotional patience of its change agents – see Jesus, Gandhi and King – and positivity to persuade majorities. Negativity is how Biden’s “most diverse cabinet ever” has failed; guilty of dishonest tweets before the election and censorship after.
Let’s hope Stanford’s very bad day is the turning point, the GOP keeps recruiting candidates like John James (MI) and Mayra Flores (TX), and the Republican 2024 ticket includes Nikki Haley or Tim Scott. The electorate needs to hear a new voice – credible and positive – talk about diversity and inclusion (because Biden has ushered in the Age of Treachery).