Are Georgetown lawprofs Randy Barnett and Nick Rosenkranz "flipping a lefty campus-activist trope on its head"?

So says Jesse Singal at  New York Magazine about the email they sent after their colleague Gary Peller saw fit to send out an email setting himself apart from the law school's email that said the law school was mourning Justice Scalia. Peller wrote that Scalia didn't deserve to be "lionized or emulated" because he "bullied lawyers, trafficked in personal humiliation of advocates and openly sided with the party of intolerance in the ‘culture wars’ he often invoked." Barnett and Rosenkranz then wrote that they were upset at Peller's email, heard from from conservative students about "how traumatized, hurt, shaken and angry" they were, and said:

All we can do, really, is convey our solidarity with our wonderful students. We share your pain. We share your anger. We stand with you. You are not alone. Be strong as Justice Scalia was strong. Remember, he heard far worse about himself than we have, and yet never wavered in both his convictions and his joy for life. But make no mistake: civil discourse at Georgetown has suffered a grievous blow. It is a time for mourning indeed.

Singal's takes the position that Barnett and Rosenkranz "are adopting campus lefty-speak in the service of a conservative argument."

After all, while some of the concerns about “trigger warnings” and fragile college students are overstated, it’s undeniably true that within a segment of the campus left, a particularly high-strung idea about dissenting views has taken hold: namely, that dissenting views on hot-button issues... actually do psychological harm to students who are exposed to them.... Barnett and Rosenkranz seem to be trying to tap into this idea with their encouragement of students to stay strong in the face of “pain” and “anger” and “traumatization” at … one professor’s email. 

Singal finds it "interesting" that Barnett and Rosenkranz didn't restrict themselves to "'traditionally' conservative argument," like respect for the dead and veneration of the Court. They deployed the kind of arguments that that lefties normally use against conservatives — empathy about emotional damage to fragile young students.

I don't know whether Barnett and Rosenkranz thought about appropriating a left-wing approach. On the text that I'm seeing, they were responding to students, and it was the students who made it about their hurt feelings. Taking it from there, Barnett and Rosenkranz didn't go far into left-speak. They mostly said: Be strong. It would have been funny if they'd gone all out "flipping a lefty campus-activist trope on its head," but humor wouldn't have fit the occasion of the Justice's death, so we don't get to see the extent to which they may have seen that potential.