It’s difficult to believe that Stanford used to be a serious university. Or that, for all its flaws, it remains a vital component in the fastest-growing part of the American economy.
Stanford’s campus is smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley, and the university is directly tied to the best and the worst of our tech economy.
Stanford is also a mess, and emblematic of so much that is wrong with higher education in America.
I wrote earlier today about the weak non-apology apology the president of Stanford and the Dean of its law school wrote to Judge Duncan for the unforgivable treatment both he and the Federalist Society were subject to last week. Duncan was shouted down, insulted in the most vulgar manner, and lectured at by a Stanford DEI Dean. He was eventually escorted out of the lecture hall by U.S. Marshals who were practically protecting him from a mob.
These were Stanford Law students behaving like barbarians. And nobody has yet been punished.
What I didn’t know when I wrote my earlier piece was the insult the Law School added to the injury directed at the Federalist Society.
In the most appalling way possible the school rubbed their noses in the excrement that the school’s administrators had dumped in front of them.
National Review’s Ed Whelen, who has done yeoman’s work covering the events, has the story:
Another entry in the beyond-parody category: As the Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium has reported, one of the Stanford law bureaucrats who attended Judge Duncan’s event and who did nothing to stop the disruption has emailed student leaders of Stanford’s Federalist Society chapter “to provide you with resources that you can use right now to support your safety and mental health.”
Stanford, you see, pretends they want to ensure that everybody has the proper feels regarding the shameful events, so they will provide counseling to the students traumatized by what happened.
Guess who the Federalist Society students should seek counseling from?
Believe it or not, one of acting associate dean of students Jeanne Merino’s suggestions is to “reach out” to DEI dean Tirien Steinbach—yes, the leading culprit in this whole matter—“if you would like support or would like to process last week’s events:
You read that right. One of the ringleaders of the whole disgusting affair is happy to counsel the very students upon whose rights she, personally, stepped on.
You can’t make this up.
Stanford also warned students not to discuss the events because the school was having a bad time of it on social media, and the reputation of the school was taking it on the chin.
The Washington Free Beacon has a terrific story on Stanford’s self-serving and highly offensive insults to the students who invited Judge Duncan to speak:
Hours after Stanford University apologized to Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan for the disruption of his talk last week, administrators encouraged members of the law school’s Federalist Society chapter, which sponsored Duncan’s visit, to “reach out” to the same administrators—including the diversity dean—who aided and abetted the melee.
Leaders of the Stanford Federalist Society received an email Saturday night from acting associate dean of students Jeanne Merino, who stood by silently as students disrupted Duncan’s talk. Merino pointed them to “resources that you can use right now to support your safety and mental health”—and discouraged them from tweeting about the event “until this news cycle winds down.”
Among the resources Merino to which pointed them was Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach, who took the podium from Duncan to talk about the “harm” he’d caused—and whom Stanford condemned in its apology to Duncan, characterizing Steinbach’s intervention as “inappropriate.”
In addition to Steinbach, Merino listed herself, Associate Director of Student Affairs Holly Parrish, and Student Affairs Program Coordinator Megan Brown as possible sources of “support.” All three watched in silence as protesters accosted Duncan and berated their peers for inviting him.
Merino went on to discourage the Federalist Society from tweeting about the disruption “until this news cycle winds down,” stating that “trolls are looking for a fight.”
I would say this is breathtaking, but in today’s academic environment, there is little that can surprise me anymore.
This is akin to the Oscars telling Chris Rock that Will Smith is available as an emotional support coach. https://t.co/sQY4NgSWkb You know what is emotionally therapeutic for those denied free speech? Free speech.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) March 13, 2023
It is impossible, for me at least, to see this not only as utterly outrageous on its face but as an intentional insult to everybody in the Federalist Society.
“Have a problem with what happened to you? Come get counseling on why you are evil people from the people who did this to you. And, by the way, shut up about this. We won, you lost.”
Demanding the students shut up is at least on brand for the institution, since that is precisely what started this whole mess in the first place: censorship by heckling. The administrators, at least, are making their demands without the heckling this time; they resorted to insulting by email instead.
The students who organized the “protest” are utterly unrepentant. Rather, they are quite proud of their actions and promise even more to come. They do this in the fight for truth, social justice, and the Marxist way.
The student activists appear unchastened. They slammed Stanford for throwing “its capable and compassionate administrators” under the bus, according to an email sent to a mailing list for the Stanford chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. There, board members of the chapter, which helped organize the protest, praised “every single person” who disrupted Duncan, characterizing the protesters’ conduct as “Stanford Law School at its best.”
The guild stands “in support of confronting judicial architects of systems of oppression with social consequences for their actions,” the group wrote, implying that it would disrupt any other conservative speaker who spoke at Stanford.
“The law school cannot have a culture where LGBTQ+ students, especially queer and trans [people of color], ‘share a sense of belonging and respect’ if speakers like Judge Duncan are normalized on our campus,” the guild’s email read. “Stanford can accede to the Federalist Society’s interest in the outcome of this event (namely, that such generative protests not be allowed to happen again), or it can further its supposed commitment to belongingness. It cannot do both.”
If Stanford indeed has a commitment to “belongingness,” whatever that means, it should drop it right now. The law is not about belonging, but about establishing the rules for a society that allows for something other than mob rule. Belongingness seems to be a synonym for mob rule in this context.
Ironically Stanford was just hit with another supposed “hate incident” that no doubt will turn out to be yet another hoax. Aside from mob rule their other M.O. is hate hoaxes.
I sincerely doubt that there are roving bands of Nazis on campus. In fact, we just saw that the bands of barbarians are Marxists.
It’s tedious in the extreme. The very idea that some Stanford student is promoting Hitler on campus is laughable.
It is bullying all the way down. Supported by the Stanford administration. It is sickening.
