Presented by David Lat at Substack.
I've listened to the first 22 minutes (and intend to finish later). That is, I've relistened to the Tirien Steinbach intervention, and I've heard, for the first time, everything that went before, that is, what students did that required the intervention.
As I heard it — and much of it was difficult to hear — there was one student who did most of the speaking, and she seemed to be trying to control the event by addressing the judge, inviting him into a dialogue instead of delivering his prepared remarks. The rest of the crowd seems to be supporting her effort, adding to the pressure on the judge, as if he might decide that the best path through the evening was to throw the written speech aside and take on all comers.
I can imagine a character in a movie doing something like that, really looking the questioning student in the eye and saying words that truly connected.
The movie in my head looks something like this:
Immediately, I think of the words of the poet:The man says, “Get out of hereI’ll tear you limb from limb”
I said, “You know they refused Jesus, too”
He said, “You’re not Him
Get out of here before I break your bones
I ain’t your pop”
I decided to have him arrested
And I went looking for a cop
The judge took a different route. That's the second half of the recording. I'll listen to it soon enough and get back to you.
Posts
182 comments:
I think you've been doing a lot of 'imagining' in order to justify this farce.
It’s all so mystifying. This “counter-speech” is, after all, free speech and the students are hurting and only trying to help.
Start disciplining the arrogant young fucks and bring them back to reality.
You also might want to consult the Youtube of the Christakis' "dialogue" with the DEI student to see how that really would have played out.
The rest of the crowd seems to be supporting her effort, adding to the pressure on the judge, as if he might decide that the best path through the evening was to throw the written speech aside and take on all comers.
1: So they were there to demand that Judge Duncan give up his freedom of speech, and do what they wanted instead
Normal people consider that to be an evil action by the Brownshirts. What do you think?
2: There is no point in "interacting" with people who are not interested in rational discussion. People who's main complaint is "you hurt my feelings and so make me feel unsafe" are intellectually and emotionally 3 years old. you can't have a rational discussion with them
3: If the female student and her fellow Brownshirts was to have a discussion with Judge Duncan, they are welcome to set up an event and invite him to it
What they are not welcome to do, what they have NO legitimacy when they try to do, is to take over someone else's event and not allow those people to have the event they want
Isn't that the Trump approach?
He used to take questions from the press it seemed like almost every day. And he would stand up there answering good questions and stupid questions until the press got tired of asking them.
It was a dialogue with his audience, though the audience all had presstitute credentials.
MUCH more interesting than just taking a few scripted questions that Biden has in advance with written answers.
John Henry
she seemed to be trying to control the event by addressing the judge, inviting him into a dialogue instead of delivering his prepared remarks
Really? Do tell us exactly what kind of "dialogue" did she want?
Did she want a dialog where he stated his position, and she responded? Clearly not, since that was the format that she and her fellow Brownshirts refused to allow
Did she want a "dialogue" where she got to define the rules, the terms, their definitions, and that then Judge Duncan "confessed" his "errors", like a good Maoist struggle session?
Did she ask a valid question ("why do you hate gay people?" is not a valid question. "why can't you find the clit?" is not a valid question. "What was your reasoning in Hobby Lobby?" would be a valid question), and then shut up herself and her fellow Brownshirt and allow him to answer?
Or was the "dialogue" she wanted not something that any sane person would consider an actual "dialogue"?
Oh, and what are the grounds that privilege her desires about what Judge Duncan should do over the desires of the people who organized the session and invited Judge Duncan?
Or is it that "left wing privilege" means no position not endorsed by the Left ever has any validity, and no person taking that position ever has any rights that the rest have to respect?
"You also might want to consult the Youtube of the Christakis' "dialogue" with the DEI student to see how that really would have played out."
Link to it if you actually want us to see it.
I presume that any given speaker would lack what it takes to engage with the students' questions and genuinely reach them (as opposed to just demanding that they be silenced so he can go on with his planned remarks).
But I was picturing an idealized speaker: Jesus. And to Christakis (whoever he/she is) and Duncan, I would say, in the words of Bob Dylan, "You're not him."
The ideal is still compelling.
And remember, the judge is a powerful man with *life tenure.* How good are we entitled to expect him to be?
Aren't question and answer sessions after a speech the normal way these things operate?
He who says he is tearing up his prepared address to talk to you extemporaneously has torn up the wrong prepared address, says Erving Goffman. _Forms of Talk_ "The Lecture"
So, how would it have been received if the Federalist Society member students had started shouting her down when she started her diatribe. Basically, I doubt if a solution will be found until mutually assured destruction is engaged. Sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander.
@John Henry
Great point.
If I'd made it myself in the post, I'd have had to create the tag, "Trump is like Jesus."
Hard to believe that anyone could think that shouting down an invited speaker in an academic setting is proper in any way, especially as an exercise of free speech.
Isn't one of the main skills of being a lawyer listening and paying attention to the other side as an advocate for your client? Aren't you supposed to be able to absorb arguments in order to counter them?
"I don't understand how we lost the case. I shouted down the judge and the opposing lawyers just like they taught me in law school"
This is a childish, behavioral problem on the part of the students. It is a bigger problem that it is promoted and condoned by the leftist University cultures.
As a Judge should not participate in a free for all debate, with no rules, it's a non-starter.
Law schools are supposed to promote such open debate between opposing view points. Based on the law and the Constitution. But those debates, supposedly are injurious to some students. An opposing view, sends the students to their fainting couches.
There is no dirth of available persons with ample credential that are more than able to air all sides of today's social quandaries.
But thats the problem. When it gets all reduced down, guided by the constitution, the answers are found in State Legislatures. NOT Court Rooms.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Those Stanford kids need to know poverty and hard labor, and doing what a boss tells them because they are hungry.
Since the need is so obvious, I’d guess that God will soon deliver that to them.
The ways in which affluenza is ripping our society apart are many. Satan is clever.
Jesus = 5 letters
Judge = 5 letters
Coincidence? I don’t think so.
ALSO!!! DEI encounter at Yale involved angry Black woman screaming profanities at…Nicholas Christakis.
That’s CHRIST-akis.
I rest my case.
Althouse said...(as opposed to just demanding that they be silenced so he can go on with his planned remarks)
Make the planned remarks, and then have a vigorous Q&A. Was the judge really the one making demands? Or was the shouting student wanting to debate the one making new demands. Judge was simply going along with the format of the invitation.
Can you get away with doing this to a judge in court? It's immature. Childish. Anti-intellectual.
The loudmouth interrupting the Judge. Who wants to hire that person to represent them? Who wants to hire that person for any job? This is where Colleges are failing both their students/customers and all of their potential employers. Imagine working in an office with that nightmare.
This isn't about the judge. It is about shout down censorship that has been condoned and promoted by University Faculty for a while now. When I was in college in the early 90's, the Profs were Clinton loving liberals, but they would let you get away with this shit.
Oh, Althouse, you are hopelessly naive. Had Duncan tried that, it wouldn't haven't changed a damned thing, unless he caved in completely and agreed with everything the interrupting student/s believed. Any attempt to debate with the students was going to be a failure to generate even an actual debate- they just would have made their own points, and then continued to shout Duncan down. This isn't a classroom where pissing off the professor has consequences.
I presume that any given speaker would lack what it takes to engage with the students' questions and genuinely reach them (as opposed to just demanding that they be silenced so he can go on with his planned remarks).
Somebody remind me of what happened to Jesus when he started trying to reach the Jews...
The horse is dead...
Ann, you are overlooking the point that the event need not be classified in binary terms - mute and obedient reception of the judge's remarks, or a dialogue. The format planned was the conventional one of prepared remarks, followed by questions. Students who did not have the patience and courtesy to listen to the prepared remarks have no place outside a kindergarten. Anyway, students who did not like that format were under no obligation to attend.
Remember, the hecklers are the very same type of people who, in relation to pre-Enlightenment Twitter, would have told you that if you did not like censorship, you were free not to have a Twitter account.
"He who says he is tearing up his prepared address to talk to you extemporaneously has torn up the wrong prepared address, says Erving Goffman. _Forms of Talk_ "The Lecture""
You're right. A truly savvy Duncan — anticipating the disruption, which he most certainly did — could have prepared a brilliant response to it and memorized it so that he'd be a towering victor and not the victim of the bad old students.
I listened to a good bit of it and felt that he let them get under his skin and that he did respond and engage and respond more than he should have…but I also don’t know that there’s any approach that would have worked and I think it’s unacceptable to expect anyone to rise above that level of heckling in order to deliver a speech.
I asked in a previous post… wouldn’t the Federalist society have standing to sue the university for failing to uphold their contractual obligations? I don’t know if a contract for a speaking engagement necessarily spelled out the code of conduct but it’s at least implied that they’d enforce those rules, right?
Starting to see videos posted on Twitter addressing liberal pronouns, and Scott Adams did a poll the other day asking, "would you be more or less likely to hire someone with pronouns in their social media profiles".
92% responded less likely. Who wants to work with female student interrupting the judge in the audio? Bet she's got pronouns in her bio. Can you imagine the amount of oxygen she must suck up in a room? Every other employee would have to tip toe around this pain in the ass.
This is where colleges fail students and the world in which they release them. Just wait until is starts affecting the quality of your cars, airplanes, houses...tangible products.
A truly savvy Duncan — anticipating the disruption, which he most certainly did — could have prepared a brilliant response to it and memorized it so that he'd be a towering victor and not the victim of the bad old students.
The point isn't to win but to convey something about the world that you put in words and convey to the audience. The lecture has no other purpose.
It's more than a guy talking. Trump doesn't give lectures.
"Isn't one of the main skills of being a lawyer listening and paying attention to the other side as an advocate for your client? Aren't you supposed to be able to absorb arguments in order to counter them?"
Duncan wasn't there to make an argument that was relevant to the students' concerns. He was launching into a mundane recitation of the role of the judiciary. A student interrupts him to say "We took Con Law!" That's what it seemed to be — intro to Article III.
Judges do speeches like this all the time. If I were in the audience, I would have had no interest in the recitation he had scripted. It would have been much better if he showed he could think on his feet and get right to the point of saying clearly and directly why the offenses the students think he's committed were really good interpretations of the law -- opening up reasons that might feel at least somewhat compelling and fresh.
Start at a higher level with that absorption of arguments and countering them. The judge was going before law students, and he should actively find the legal arguments they're trying to make and focus the discussion for their benefit. There was chaos, and everyone had the opportunity to get out in front of it and show what they could do — to demonstrate "skill," to use your word.
“Tirien Steinbach intervention” is rich. Prior to the lecture the DEI dean strategerized the entire thirty-minute takeover of the lecture with her student disciples, then gave them the sign to scram at the last possible moment before disciplinary action commenced. It went down exactly as scripted.
Playing dumb is unbecoming a former law professor.
So Althouse is just now going to listen to the entire audio of this deplorable incident with more comments to come, notwithstanding leaping to the defense of the DEI dean through at least 3 days of postings based on an incomplete review of the *entire*What happened to the principle of understanding *all* aspects of a fact pattern before advocating for a particular side? Stop digging - the horse is dead.
I'm so tired of this story. I saw a thread on Twitter recently that was pretty funny, but I think true, that seems to apply here:
"If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a progressive is a vegetarian, he doesn't want you to eat meat."
If there are students at Stanford Law who don't want to hear Judge Duncan, they can just stay home. But no, they want to make sure those who do want to hear Judge Duncan, can't. They are idiots and jerks. And, as I pointed out earlier, the DEI administrator is nothing more than the equivalent of the dreaded Soviet commissar, there to ensure "The Message" is heard loud and clear and rigidly enforced.
Maybe it's because I worked in the private sector and not the academy that I see things this way. I recalled yesterday, about 30 years ago, sitting in a business dinner where one of our managers mercilessly badgered an important presentation by the president of a software vendor we had just taken on with a big contract (he was unhappy we were going to use the software). When word about his behavior - which involved an abundance of f-bombs and other foul language - got back to company management, he was demoted, banished to our corporate equivalent of "Siberia", and he left via early retirement shortly thereafter. But these Stanford Law students will suffer no consequences and will probably go on to graduate - and become shitty lawyers. And they may find out there are still places in the real world, the one I worked in, where this kind of behavior will not be tolerated.
"Had Duncan tried that, it wouldn't haven't changed a damned thing, unless he caved in completely and agreed with everything the interrupting student/s believed."
I take that as a statement of your belief that Duncan has relatively low aptitude and it's just puzzling why we have a system that gives life tenure to such a person.
After your word "unless," I would put, unless he truly has the intellect, courage, and eloquence to deserve the life-tenured position he holds.
Duncan wasn't there to make an argument that was relevant to the students' concerns.
Who was forcing the students to be there? It wasn't a class session, it wasn't a class assignment... ATTENDANCE WAS ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY!!!
If the students felt his argument wasn't relevant, they should have simply left.
It would have been much better if he showed he could think on his feet and get right to the point of saying clearly and directly why the offenses the students think he's committed were really good interpretations of the law -- opening up reasons that might feel at least somewhat compelling and fresh.
But that's not what he had been invited to do. If the Leftwing students wanted to debate the man's ideas, they could have invited Duncan to a different presentation to do so. He might even have accepted. What gives the Lefty students the right to disrupt his presentation and talk about what they want to talk about instead? How naive (or disingenuous) do you have to be to believe that the Lefty students would have been willing to allow Duncan to "think on his feet and get right to the point of saying clearly and directly why the offenses the students think he's committed were really good interpretations of the law"?
They weren't there to debate, they were there to silence.
Wait...now your position is "suck it up buttercup"?
Your take-away is that Duncan is clearly incompetent because if he was competent, he would have quieted and then enthralled the howling mob with his eloquence?
Really?
Instead of a degree, just give the little children a participation trophy. They acted like a 3 year old having a tantrum.
This is getting so ridiculous.
Whether or not the judge’s prepared speech was high quality has absolutely no bearing on his right to speak without interruption in a venue where a student group invited him to speak.
And aside from that, he only got through some introductory remarks so we have no idea how good or bad the rest of the speech was.
And please….
The judge was going before law students, and he should actively find the legal arguments they're trying to make and focus the discussion for their benefit.
Legal arguments they are trying to make?? As soon as he began speaking about COVID they were shouting out things like “my grandpa died of COVID!” Real sharp legal minds at work there at our #2 law school.
"You're right. A truly savvy Duncan — anticipating the disruption, which he most certainly did — could have prepared a brilliant response to it and memorized it so that he'd be a towering victor and not the victim of the bad old students."
Uh-huh.
But the students who organized the event, the Federalist Society, did not get the event they planned, did not get to hear the judge talk about actual law decided in his courtroom. Why do you elevate the protesting students' rights over the rights of he ones who took the trouble to set up the event? I've not heard a peep of defense for those students rooked out of an enlightening discussion. As others have noted the protesters could set up a Q&A if they tried, but they don't. They hijack our side's events for their own purposes much like a parasite hijack's a host's body. The event should have been deloused and allowed to proceed as planned.
A truly savvy Duncan — anticipating the disruption, which he most certainly did …
@Alhouse, why would you believe that?
Just to begin to brainstorm how the judge could have begun to engage with the student who was challenging him with questions:
I understand that you are angry about the outcomes of cases I've been involved with and I often don't like the outcomes myself, but can you understand what it's like to have the power and the obligation to follow the law and to humbly go where it takes you?
Begin a Socratic dialogue. See if the student will engage with you.
If she says something like that's all bullshit and you know as well as I do that judges don't follow the law, that they just do what they want and that's what's in the interest of affluent white people... well, then if you can't take if from there, I don't know how you got through Day 1 of your laws school constitutional law course.
The students arent there to listen as with evergreen missou yale dartmouth they are to harrange intimidate they are red guard
He was launching into a mundane recitation of the role of the judiciary.
Says you. I say he was there to give the lecture the Federalist Society wanted to hear. This "he should have done X to counter them" BS isn't a neutral stance, Althouse. It's not cruel neutrality. It's just cruel. Stop blaming the victim of the mob: the mob is at fault.
I take that as a statement of your belief that Duncan has relatively low aptitude and it's just puzzling why we have a system that gives life tenure to such a person.
The other interpretation you are ignoring is that these students were immature idiots who were unwilling to listen. They have been conditioned to believe that there is no valid argument that opposes their ideological beliefs about LBGTQ issues.
Why are you moving the goalposts to question how well he thinks on his feet or whether or not he deserves tenure? His right to speak and be heard in this venue have absolutely nothing to do with those factors.
Ann Althouse said...But I was picturing an idealized speaker: Jesus.
Jesus, when questioned by Pilate, mostly stood mute.
Jesus called the Pharisees and others fools.
Jesus very explicitly appealed to authority when working to persuade people while he was physically present on earth--he grounded all his claims in the fact that he was the Son of God and repeatedly said his teachings were true because they come from the Father.
An argument that this Judge should have been more like Jesus in terms of interacting with and attempting to persuade a hostile crowd is contrary to a number of your objections to the Judge's actual approach (both stylistically and substantively).
Be clear: My opinion of Steinbach remains the same. I found her speech stronger on second listen. My earlier posts were about her.
Leftists don't debate. They lecture. There is no reaction the judge "coulda shoulda" done that would have stopped the mob from shouting him down, your vivid imaginings notwithstanding. The least you could do is show us an incident where, as you suppose, a conservative engages with an unruly mob and an enlightening dialogue ensues. One example would help us understand what you are saying was a possible reasonable outcome. I've seen no evidence of the protesters actually wanting to listen.
"“Tirien Steinbach intervention” is rich. Prior to the lecture the DEI dean strategerized the entire thirty-minute takeover of the lecture with her student disciples..."
Have you listened to the full recording I linked to? Did you feel any obligation to get the facts straight about the times? I listened to the first 22 minutes, at which point we were past the students initial behavior and Steinbach had finished her speech and half of the protesting students had left. That's 22, not 30. It's really troubling that you misstate the facts. You should take better care of your credibility.
Ann just won't give up and admit her argument is wrong. When Trump took questions from reporters almost all were hostile and it changed no minds. I also disagree that Duncan anticipated his reception. I expect no prominent conservative will agree to appear on Stanford's campus again. Charles Murray was attacked and his faculty host was injured by rioters
This is the left's way of shutting down opinions they disagree with. ANTIFA attacked a Charles Kirk talk at UC Davis, The black chancellor invited it.
>Ann Althouse said...
Judges do speeches like this all the time. If I were in the audience, I would have had no interest in the recitation he had scripted.<
Well here's an idea, then - don't attend his speech.
Start at a higher level with that absorption of arguments and countering them.
So we (and apparently the judge) have a duty to absorb arguments and counter them at a higher level.
What duty do the disruptive students have?
"Begin a Socratic dialogue. See if the student will engage with you."
An exchange of ideas relating to the location of the clit versus the prostate and the necessities involved in determining the location of each would have been a good jumping off point.
The students were there to be hostile and shut down the speaker. That was their purpose and intent. They were not there for dialogue.
I'm getting flashbacks of the preacher approaching the Martians with a Bible in his hands. That didn't work either.
This wasn’t a scheduled debate or question and answer forum. Why do you think that students breaking the rules should be rewarded by reframing the event to what they want? You’re also assuming that there were answers the student would have been willing to respectfully listen to without further harassment. The students are adults and should be expected to act like it. If they can’t act like an adult good parents know that you don’t reward a child throwing a tantrum by giving them what they want - unless the parent wants more tantrums.
Could he have done what you say? Yes, but the growing majority of people are tired of agitators breaking rules and mores but expecting the majority to follow those rules and mores.
Ann Althouse said...Just to begin to brainstorm how the judge could have begun to engage with the student who was challenging him with questions:
If someone accosts you on the street and you deal with it by brusquely walking away how do you think you'd feel about someone saying "well here's how you could have handled that better--here's how you could have respected that person's POV and maybe even persuaded them to like you?"
Many commenters here take the position that the heckling was out of line, inappropriate, and should neither have been tolerated nor rewarded (with attention/diversion of the Judge's intended course of action). Saying "this is how he should have engaged" begs the question.
You as a person walking down the street don't owe a stranger who imposes themselves on you any attention or deference; what justifies your seeming belief that the Judge (as an invited speaker) owes those hecklers so much more? The Judge is the injured party here--if I scolded a woman for not responding "correctly" to being heckled I have a hard time believing you'd nod along.
He could have responded by flipping them off. He could have responded by throwing his shoe at the heckler. He could have offered to give them all back massages if they'd stay quiet. Or he could have simply decided not to go--that was the desire of most of the hecklers and the likely the point behind the DEI Admin's question of whether the juice was worth the squeeze. The question isn't why he didn't take this or that rhetorical tack you believe would have been superior, but why you think it's morally ok to force that on him (in violation of standard civility, yes, but also of the Stanford code of conduct).
Hell, I'm old enough to vaguely remember the offense taken by one very smart and very Nice law professor when commenters on her blog repeatedly gave her advice on how she should have reacted when she was upset by some libertarians at a conference once.
"Here's what you should have said," and "here's how you should have felt and reacted to that situation" weren't all that welcome back then, were they? Why's that ok as a response to this Judge now?
Ann @ 11:16: “… Duncan wasn't there to make an argument that was relevant to the students' concerns. He was launching into a mundane recitation of the role of the judiciary. A student interrupts him to say ‘We took Con Law!’ That's what it seemed to be — intro to Article III.
Judges do speeches like this all the time. If I were in the audience, I would have had no interest in the recitation he had scripted…”
I hadn’t realized that the Judge’s prepared (but undelivered) remarks were available for public inspection. From what you say, you seem to have read the remarks, and can thus opine. That’s good to know.
Can you supply a link or tell us where we find the remarks? Thanks.
The professor is sullenly full of shit.
Pathetic and embarrassing.
>Had Duncan tried that, it wouldn't haven't changed a damned thing, unless he caved in completely and agreed with everything the interrupting student/s believed."<"
Ann Althouse said...
"I take that as a statement of your belief that Duncan has relatively low aptitude and it's just puzzling why we have a system that gives life tenure to such a person."<
A gross, clumsy straw man. Really? On the fourth day you've resorted to stark sophistry to attempt to turn the tide. How disappointing.
Ann Althouse said...Just to begin to brainstorm how the judge could have begun to engage with the student who was challenging him with questions
Engaging with a heckler in this way means not engaging with the students who invited this speaker to this event in the way the speaker and the students who invited him wish. Why would you give precedence to the heckler's wish to derail the speech/desire to engage her way over the desire of the students who invited the speaker and are otherwise following the common rules of decorum and the schools' code of conduct? Why would you give precedence to the heckler's desired form of engagement over the Judge's own desired form of engagement?
Do you not see that the Judge choosing to engage in the way you suggest would VALIDATE and reward the heckler's choice to heckle and disrupt? Do you not see that rewarding that kind of behavior will encourage future behavior of that sort and make giving speeches more difficult, costly, and less likely to occur in the future, harming the engagement of free speech for the whole campus?
For someone who so frequently makes reference to the importance of a person not letting others IMPOSE their wishes on themselves you seem strangely unbothered by these hecklers IMPOSING, without consent nor permission, their preferred form of engagement on the speaker, the audience, and the group that invited the speaker to give a speech in the format they wished.
"Can you supply a link or tell us where we find the remarks? Thanks."
The link is in the post.
Maybe you didn't listen or maybe you found it hard to hear. My words "launching into" might have helped you avoid needing to ask. I heard how he was beginning. It was mundane to anyone who's already steeped in conlaw.
But you throw sarcasm at me. Why?
That's 22, not 30. It's really troubling that you misstate the facts. You should take better care of your credibility.
You believe orchestrating a 22-minute lecture disruption is a significantly different act than orchestrating a 30-minute lecture disruption?
Willfully obtuse distinctions not cost-effective.
It's funny that many of you who condemn the students for jumping all over Duncan are jumping all over me.
Please note that I am not responding by calling you "dogshit" or the "inmates" of the "asylum."
On this topic, Althouse, you are just ridiculous. I imagine you have never been in the situation Duncan found himself in- powerless to give a speech/lecture you were invited to give. The students interrupting him and the dean who took it upon herself to lecture him about respecting the hecklers feelings were not the students who invited Duncan to the event. This situation is exactly the same as inviting a guest to a dinner party in a rented hall, and having party crashers show up to harangue them. There was no obligation of any kind for Duncan to agree to debate these people- no intellectual obligation and no social etiquette obligation to do so.
I don't give a flying fuck what Duncan's intellectual capabilities are- they are not germane to what happened. For what it is worth- I don't think he handled it well at all- he should have just walked out the moment it started up and it became clear he wasn't going to be allowed to speak.
Professor: What are you doing here?
Duncan is a judge, not a law prof. When he accepted the invitation from Federalist to speak on a particular topic he did not agree to take on all comers on their topics of choice.
Also, he is an appointed judge not an elected official conducting a town hall. He is not , and should not be, obliged to stand in the face of a shit storm from the left or the right.
If you are confused about what's going on, you might want to follow the incursion by masked intruders into the Dean's Con Law classroom to punish her for the sin of apology. Socrates did not seem the order of the day.
It’s easy to Monday morning quarterback. We know the event ended without violence. We’ve listened to everything that transpired as we’re sitting in our comfortable safe space. The judge was faced with hostility he didn’t expect with zero support from the administrators in the audience. In fact, after the fact he looked up a decision he was accused of supporting (and didn’t remember in the moment) and found out and remembered he was on the dissenting side. Also some people deal better with this kind of stress (Russell Brand) and others don’t. This shouldn’t mean that this judge should never accept a speaking engagement again or that he isn’t an excellent judge.
What we don’t know is how this event would have unfolded had he engaged the crowd. My experience had been that when I’ve engaged with people who are angry and vocally in disagreement with me, they become more vocal and angrier. In fact how did Steinbach calm the students down - by agreeing with them and scolding the judge. She placed herself clearly on their side and left him knowing he had zero defenders in a hostile space.
It's funny that many of you who condemn the students for jumping all over Duncan are jumping all over me.
We aren't stopping you from creating new posts or presenting your arguments. We are engaging you afterwards, which is exactly what the kids and dean should have done. We aren't calling you or your ideas evil, merely wrong.
"It's funny that many of you who condemn the students for jumping all over Duncan are jumping all over me."
This really is the top of the ridiculousness heap. You aren't giving a speech and being interrupted repeatedly in these comment threads. The equivalent for the students would have been to critique Duncan's speech and/or legal policy preferences in an open forum, like an editorial or an on-line comments section like this one. Alternatively, they could have waited until the Q & A session that surely would have followed Duncan's talk. They did none of those things.
Ann Althouse said...Judges do speeches like this all the time. If I were in the audience, I would have had no interest in the recitation he had scripted
Certainly, and you could have made the decision not to attend or to leave once you determined you weren't interested--both of those behaviors would have been unobjectionable.
If you decided due to your disinterest to start booing, heckling, or insisting that the Judge change his speech format or topic to something that'd interest you, though, you would have been out of line. That seems obvious but you certainly appear to be avoiding that conclusion in implicitly justifying the hecklers' actions.
Many years ago Zach Galifianakis had a bit where he said people shouldn't yell "Boo" at concerts and shows--they should be more specific and say "I hate what you're doing, why are you doing that, I hate it!" That was self-evidently absurd enough to be a very funny joke, but you seem to be saying it's a valid tactic and that the speaker in this case was in the wrong for not responding better to it.
Ann Althouse said...It's funny that many of you who condemn the students for jumping all over Duncan are jumping all over me.
Why aren't you handling it better? Why don't you try addressing us by doing XYZ?
See how condescending and out of place that is? Also this is a false equivalence--we're not objecting to the hecklers being mean to Duncan or "jumping all over him" with pointed questions, we're objecting to their breaking the rules and heckling, preventing him from speaking and harming the experience of the people who invited him to speak. None of the comments here prevent anyone else form reading nor posting their own comments--they aren't in any meaningful way equivalent to heckling.
There was no obligation of any kind for Duncan to agree to debate these people- no intellectual obligation and no social etiquette obligation to do so.
Bingo! We have a winnah!
"... she seemed to be trying to control the event..."
Be careful. This protest was led by the transsexual community at Stanford Law (IRATE). If this was the student with short blonde hair, a blue tie and an oversized men's suit who was directing the action as some of the protesters walked out you may have committed a misgendering.
Let me add here, Professor, you really don't do victim well.
“Judges do speeches like this all the time. If I were in the audience, I would have had no interest in the recitation he had scripted. It would have been much better if he showed he could think on his feet and get right to the point of saying clearly and directly why the offenses the students think he's committed were really good interpretations of the law -- opening up reasons that might feel at least somewhat compelling and fresh.”
This is why you didn’t invite him. Let’s honor the decision of the students who did invite him. This wasn’t a compulsory event. The students who were bored by his speech could quietly leave or not attend at all or protest outside the venue.
"The professor is sullenly full of shit.
Pathetic and embarrassing."
I'd add smug to that description.
The smug self-righteousness is almost too much for me to bear. Perhaps she could tell me how I should react.
BTW, calling on Elie Mystal for support certainly didn't help the Althouse cause.
If I start posting advertisements or links to porno or something on your comment board you'll delete them and ban me--no one would object, we understand that individual posters don't have a right to hijack what everyone else here sees even if that poster REALLY thinks the ads are important/good/should be shared.
That's the equivalent to heckling, not "jumping on" someone with vigorous, pointed comments/attacks.
"You shouldn't ban people who post off-topic links, hijack comment threads with their own topics, and otherwise try to disrupt the environment you wish to foster--instead you should engage them in a Socratic dialog and use your superior intellect to persuade them to stop."
See how dumb that sounds? They didn't want to be persuaded, they wanted to impose their will on the speaker and forum. They wanted to shut the speaker up and make him unable to say what he wanted to say. They wanted to prevent the people who invited the speaker and agreed to the format of the speech from being able to hear it!
When someone says "I want to use your post to instead talk about an entirely different subject" you warn them and then remove those posts. You have a rule, here, about staying on topic. Why shouldn't a similar rule be respected in the context of a law student group's desire to hear a speaker of their choosing in the format of their choosing?
"The professor is sullenly full of shit.
Pathetic and embarrassing."
I'd add smug to that description.
The smug self-righteousness is almost too much for me to bear. Perhaps she could tell me how I should react.
It's funny that many of you who condemn the students for jumping all over Duncan are jumping all over me.
The difference you are unwilling to acknowledge is that we are trying to engage with you after you have spoken. The students were trying to silence the Judge and prevent him from speaking.
None of us have said that your ideas have hurt us or caused us any harm. None of us have called for you to be silenced.
Here's the link to the "dialogue" in which the Yale girl screams "who the fuck hired you" in response to Christakis disagreeing with her point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IEFD_JVYd0
Give it up, commenters. This is Althouse at peak stampy-foot braindead lib feminist. Every opposing opinion only serves to solidify her belief that the dumb dean was brilliant, the disruptive students engaging, and the invited speaker being mobbed was the instigator. She completely supports the shouting down and shutting up an invited speaker, calls it Free Speech, and then she removes blog comments she doesn't like. The juice ain't worth the squeeze.
Isn't this a law school? Where they teach the children that one side gets to present their case, then the other side gets to present theirs? Isn't that the crucible where the truth can be found?
Or is this a new kind of school, where they teach Bullying 101. One where the bigger bully wins? The bigger bully gets to shut down the opposing side disrespectfully, not letting them present their arguments by claiming their arguments are "actual violence", but only forcing them to respond to your arguments, declaring yourself the winner before the debate is even begun, then burning the whole thing down if you don't get your way.
Stanford seems like a really shitty law school. I'll be sure to never hire one of their graduates unless I need someone killed.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
“It's funny that many of you who condemn the students for jumping all over Duncan are jumping all over me.”
Pointing out with specificity over and over again how and why a person has erred is not jumping all over him or her. Please avoid engaging in victimhood simply because commenters in good faith disagree with you.
This sequel to "Ann is either a dolt or a troll", is hilarious as the goal posts are now out of the stadium
If Ann allowed her students to pull this bullshit, she would have been disciplined or fired if that was possible. Both the original post and this one proves to me that Ann is just a hopeless, immature, not-knowing-proper manners, type who has sided with the same creeps that disrupt society today --- THEY CAME TO SHUT DOWN SPEECH THEY DID NOT LIKE. Not to engage in "debate" or to listen to ANYTHING the judge had to say.
Everyone of them should be disciplined or expelled depending on their behaviors (poor Ann decides that since twenty something of the protestors left after their actions shut down the speech-- Ann, it was a speech, not a debate -- it wasn't all that bad, and the judge is wrong and this DEI chick is to be heralded, especially since Ann did something I would fire my attorney for -- listening to HALF the evidence (audio) and making a very public decision based on that ). The DEI chick should be reassigned to teach a credible subject, and the disciplinary notice placed in her file -- if not fired. The DEI department should be eliminated and that office salted after burning it to the ground (guess my opinion on that horseshit LOLz).
We now know, if we didn't before, that Ann is more Left and in favor of prohibiting Free Speech that is not approved by her counterparts in the "Progressive" Hitler Youths of today. Every single one of her students were either given a BAD education in her teaching years or fooled into thinking this hack thought that the Law mattered. Especially Constitutional Law.
As a layman arguing cases for a federal agency against the lawyers for the Union (who billed by the hour from the mostly confiscated Union dues bank) at Regular Regional Panel Arbitration (my first arbitration was before Raymond L. Britton), I was 9-0. Not all lawyers are good representatives for their clients as not all chefs can run a successful restaurant.
Rant over. Kick me out if you wish. Sick of this.
Have a blessed day.
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
Ann @ 12:02: "...The link is in the post.
Maybe you didn't listen or maybe you found it hard to hear. My words "launching into" might have helped you avoid needing to ask. I heard how he was beginning. It was mundane to anyone who's already steeped in conlaw."
Thanks. I guess I wasn't clear. I thought you meant you had read a transcript of Judge Duncan's *prepared remarks* that he had *intended to present" but which the hecklers prevented him from doing. I see now that your opinion concerned not his prepared remarks but his actual Q&A with the hecklers, which David Lat kindly summarized.
It's too bad the original lecture and Q&A came to nothing, because it sounds as if some interesting decisions are being made: vaccine mandates, Texas' law purporting to empower anybody to sue abortion clinics, etc. Oh well: instead of "same old same old" Article III stuff, we have a really meaty discussion of the right to be heard, the right to be protected from unwanted ideas, and the right to abuse and harass an honored guest.
Ann - What Duncan did or should have done or should have been able to do is a worthwhile question, but it is beside the point. The point is that a speaker invited by a recognized student group should be able to speak (however well or poorly) without interruption by other students who seemingly attended for no other purpose than to exercise a heckler's veto. If they were simply disappointed they could have gotten up and left.
If the school takes no steps to prevent this from happening again, conservative students may well see no alternative but to emulate their counterparts' behavior the next time there is a Progressive speaker - and then where will we be?
Ann Althouse said.... If I were in the audience, I would have had no interest in the recitation he had scripted.
When you go to a play and get bored do you stand up and tell the performers you don't have any interest in what they're saying? Do you shout questions or suggestions of what they should do instead at them? If not why not--why isn't that appropriate?
"Well what those actors SHOULD have done when that audience member interrupted their play and insisted they respond to the shouts was engage with the question and disregard the play they were performing in favor of dialog with the heckler. They must not be very savvy actors!"
Professor, put down the shovel. How many days now have you been berating this guy who was prevented from speaking and simultaneously lauding or at least excusing the actions of the DEI Dean and disruptive students?
We get it, you hate Duncan based on his viewpoint and previous statements.
Now you’re just protesting too much…
You’re better than this.
Althouse seems to be confusing the capabilities of an ideal law professor with those of a ideal judge.
I don't see what value there is to glibness in "debating" fools when it comes to being a proper judge. The ideal judge pays close attention to the informed, legally-based arguments of opposing lawyers and then spends the time necessary to come to a carefully considered--and, ideally, wise--decision.
Ann Althouse said...
"“Tirien Steinbach intervention” is rich. Prior to the lecture the DEI dean strategerized the entire thirty-minute takeover of the lecture with her student disciples..."
Have you listened to the full recording I linked to? Did you feel any obligation to get the facts straight about the times? I listened to the first 22 minutes, at which point we were past the students initial behavior and Steinbach had finished her speech and half of the protesting students had left. That's 22, not 30. It's really troubling that you misstate the facts. You should take better care of your credibility.
22 vs. 30 minutes. So instead of responding to the main point that the DEI dean acted supportively with respect to the disrupters, you focus your assertion that the poster misstated facts on whether the time lapse was 22 minutes, not 30 minutes. Some might call such a response mere petifoggery.
Ann Althouse said...
I presume that any given speaker would lack what it takes to engage with the students' questions and genuinely reach them (as opposed to just demanding that they be silenced so he can go on with his planned remarks).
You cannot "engage with" Red Guards. They are not there to "engage", they are there to force you to bow to their will.
Are you seriously trying to claim that the Brownshirts / Red Guards who showed up to attack and heckle Judge Duncan were actually willing to engage in a rational discussion?
Can you please point us to ANY time in the last 5 years when Left wing "protesters" actually engaged in intelligent discussion, rather than simply shouting down wrong thinkers?
Give us one time, with link to the video, where those "protesters" actually allowed the other side to state their position without harassment, where they responded with reasoned argument rather than with whines about "you hurt my feelings!".
The reason why no one here is "engaging" with you is because what your'e arguing for is so ludicrous that there's nothing to engage with.
"Had Duncan tried that, it wouldn't haven't changed a damned thing, unless he caved in completely and agreed with everything the interrupting student/s believed."
I take that as a statement of your belief that Duncan has relatively low aptitude and it's just puzzling why we have a system that gives life tenure to such a person.
No, it is our knowledge, based on paying attention to reality rather than to The West Wing, that the Left wing thugs who were interrupting Duncan are impervious to reason and logic, and that therefore no human being, no matter how brilliant, can accomplish what what you claim Duncan should have tried.
Speaking of should-haves, here's a good Dilan Esper twitter thread on what the students who object to the Judge should have done instead of heckling. The short version is to ask him very pointed questions, during the Q&A, highlighting how his positions and beliefs are contrary to Supreme Court guidance and Constitutional principles.
Since we're giving advice on how people SHOULD have acted it seems more in keeping with a common understanding of morality to at least start with suggestions of how the hecklers--the people attempting to disrupt a speech and deprive people of the ability to hear it--should have acted.
AA: to refresh your recollection, you blogged on multiple occasions about Christakis, the Yale residential college head, and his informal courtyard encounter/confrontation with a group of students upset with his wife's comments on costumes. He pretty clearly did not deserve the treatment he got.
It's funny that many of you who condemn the students for jumping all over Duncan are jumping all over me.
You control the content here, as it should be. You are free to moderate these comments, turn off comments, and/or create new posts to continue your thoughts.
The issue isn’t that the students were jumping on him- it is that they were hijacking his right to deliver the speech he was invited to give and the rights of the students who invited him to hear it- and even more importantly, the sole administrator who spoke up defended that behavior instead of condemning it.
Well, I listened to it. It was disgraceful. The students were horrible. Listening to the audio it is obvious they are enthralled with the very act of protest. They don’t care what this judge has to say. They have made up their minds and are not able to back up their accusations with facts when asked to do so. They laugh contemptuously and snap their fingers and pound their desks. The dean’s actions are also unworthy of someone charged with educating law students. Perhaps they would have learned something if they listened to the judge’s reasoning for his decisions. But the dean, in her remarks, let the students know she was on their side. These protesters are not nuanced or serious thinkers. They seemed to ignore the dean’s request to let him speak, indicating IMHO, that they took the dean’s words as license to continue to disrespect the speaker, since not only did she voice support for them, but she also voiced disrespect for the speaker. You will note that the heckling continued after the dean spoke. The judge lost his temper, yes. He could have handled it better himself. I have to respectfully disagree with you on the dean, though.
“If I were in the audience, I would have had no interest in the recitation he had scripted.”
And if that was your reaction, you could choose to leave… like a normal person would.
“If I had trained the monkeys to…”
Ann Althouse said...
Please note that I am not responding by calling you "dogshit" or the "inmates" of the "asylum."
No, you're just calling Duncan a moron for not being able to convince a Red Guard acting as part of a mob of Red Guards to become a pro free market intellectual .
Are you just completely, utterly, and pathetically ignorant about China's Cultural Revolution? Are you just completely, utterly, and pathetically ignorant about the Nazi Brownshirts?
People who are willing to engage in intellectual discourse do not shout down the other side, they listen to the other side so they can respond to what the other side has to say.
The barbarians are at the gates, and you are demanding that we let them, and, and attacking anyone who wants to keep them from pillaging, raping, and murdering.
What is wrong with you?
I know Judge Duncan from when he used to teach a few classes at Ole Miss years ago. He was brilliant and patient and happy to engage with anyone who disagreed with him. He taught a class on the religion clauses of the first amendment, which was somehow credited as Conlaw II. Duncan could, and often did, steel man arguments and positions he obviously didn't hold himself. And I distinctly remember him impressing upon a certain law student the importance of being respectful when speaking about court decisions and jurists, especially when you don't agree with them.
And for what it's worth, Duncan said Stanford was treating its conservative students like dogshit. He didn't call anyone that.
FFS, DIE is apparently the hill Althouse has chosen to die on!
Ann Althouse said...
"He who says he is tearing up his prepared address to talk to you extemporaneously has torn up the wrong prepared address, says Erving Goffman. _Forms of Talk_ "The Lecture""
You're right. A truly savvy Duncan — anticipating the disruption, which he most certainly did — could have prepared a brilliant response to it and memorized it so that he'd be a towering victor and not the victim of the bad old students.
Really? Please tell us, exactly what could he say that would cause the students to shut up and let him talk.
Are you saying that you are too stupid to be able to come up with that speech, but Duncan is an incompetent buffoon who never should have been given a judicial appointment for not having done so?
It's put up or shut up time: provide us with the speech that would cause these Red Guards to stop heckling and harassing, and instead shut up and listen.
And if you can't provide us with such a speech, admit that it's because no such speech is possible, and therefore you are wrong to claim Duncan should have provided it
"It is the face of rising generation of censors and speech phobics that has been carefully cultivated by many in academia. Our institutions of higher education have become academic echo chambers where opposing views are no longer tolerated and preventing free speech is claimed to be acts of free speech."
https://jonathanturley.org/2023/03/16/americas-rising-generation-of-censors-stanford-and-davis-show-the-success-of-the-anti-free-speech-movement/#more-202181
This is all about the agenda. Who sets the agenda controls.
(A lesson conservatives have been very slow to learn).
Why should Judge Duncan go along with the agenda of the disrupters?
You blithely accept that he should have been sharp enough to take on their agenda.
That is not the point. He wasn’t there to take on their agenda. Playing their game is losing.
Pro Althouse:
Student: "You hurt gay people"
Duncan: "You hurt Christians. Why is it ok to hurt Christians, but not ok to hurt gay people?"
Student: "because we value gay people, and we don't value Christians"
Duncan: "I value Christians, and our Constitution guarantees Christians the right to the free exercise of their religion"
Student: "The Constitution was written by white male slave owners, we dont' care what it says"
Now, do tell us how Duncan responds. Do tell us what brilliant argument he can make to the amoral monster who has no principles (a principle is a rule you follow even when it gives an answer you don't like. The Student protesters only rule is "we win"), who is busy violating Dunca's and the Fed Soc students free speech rights?
Ann Althouse said...
"Isn't one of the main skills of being a lawyer listening and paying attention to the other side as an advocate for your client? Aren't you supposed to be able to absorb arguments in order to counter them?"
Duncan wasn't there to make an argument that was relevant to the students' concerns.
1: Neither you nor they have any idea if that's true, because the thugs you are supporting wouldn't let him speak.
2: They weren't the ones who invited him. Their concerns are, and should be, utterly irrelevant to Duncan. The concerns that matter are those of the people who invited him
3: What are their "concerns"? What they object to is that he tries to protect the rights of people they hate. They are never going to stop hating, and they are never going to accept that their hate objects have rights that must be respected.
So there is no possible way of engaging with them that could in any way be fruitful
I like Althouse's post today. She is inviting us to participate in her thought experiment. What if?
In the real world, I agree with most of the posters who are staunchly against the students and their infantile behavior. But that isn't really the issue raised in this post.
I'd answer "what if?" but I'm at work and don't have the time beyond this, likely useless, observation.
"I listened to a good bit of it and felt that he let them get under his skin and that he did respond and engage and respond more than he should have…but I also don’t know that there’s any approach that would have worked and I think it’s unacceptable to expect anyone to rise above that level of heckling in order to deliver a speech."
He could have said something like, "I have been invited here to present some remarks, at the end of which you and others present may ask questions or engage me on matters discussed in my talk. If you prefer to engage me now in an ad hoc discussion rather than listen to my remarks and have a conversation when I conclude my talk, then I will be happy to leave now."
Althouse: "A truly savvy Duncan — anticipating the disruption, which he most certainly did — could have prepared a brilliant response to it and memorized it so that he'd be a towering victor and not the victim of the bad old students."
In the words of the prosaic Mr. Hemingway: "Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?"
I give up. Why the hell is anyone required to listen to the diatribe from the DIE Kommissar? Do we really live in that country now, because has no place in an America based on freedom. What made you decide to become one of the fascists?
---It's funny that many of you who condemn the students for jumping all over Duncan are jumping all over me.
Quite the parallel. Are they preventing you from adding further comments to the blog post you created? Are they blocking the blog entirely?
But logic is beside the point. They may be frustrated trying to keep up with your mad tap-dancing. To quote someone you know well: "You should..." ask yourself why.
It's funny that many of you who condemn the students for jumping all over Duncan are jumping all over me.
Might I suggest that this is a false equivalency?
1. You posted with the expectation of response (though you might not have known what it would be, but a savvy blogger...)
2. You were not prevented from making your point without interruption.
3. You control the room. You always have the option of silencing any you want to. (I am quite appreciative that you do not except in appropriate cases. Would you consider the student's outbursts and hijacking of the Judge's thread, a blockable offense in a blog?)
"Christakis (whoever he/she is)"
Half-seriously: this is Althouse's most disappointing comment in the whole thread.
"he should actively find the legal arguments they're trying to make and focus the discussion for their benefit"
Others have covered this, but he "should" do no such thing, since it kowtows to the mob. Plus, 1. they didn't approach him with "legal arguments"; 2. he was not there to have a "discussion"; 3. he apparently wanted to do something for the "benefit" of the students who had actually invited him.
"Gahrie: now your position is "suck it up buttercup"?"
So, you didn't like her first set of specious arguments? She's got more. Many more. Always. Is there an inverse relationship between the number of arguments trotted out and the common sense brought to bear on the issue?
"Begin a Socratic dialogue"
No. OMG. No.
Apologies if any fellow rational commenter has mentioned this in the various threads, but: there is a certain, shall we say, irony in students showing up voluntarily at a talk by a dangerous person who makes them feel unsafe to complain that he is a dangerous person who makes them feel unsafe. Almost makes you think that the mob behavior is just a bad-faith BS power move that has nothing to do with actual safety or feelings, except the feeling of crushing the rights of others and asserting control.
What the students did was one step short of pulling the fire alarm on the speaker. Had they done that, perhaps the speaker could have continued the discussion in the parking lot. A Socratic dialogue as to why pulling the fire alarm on an invited speaker is or is not acceptable behavior. Be sure to invite the Fire Marshall.
Too bad we can't shout Althouse down via blog comments. If we could she could show us how the Socratic method works when we can't hear her.
“The rest of the crowd seems to be supporting her effort, adding to the pressure on the judge, as if he might decide that the best path through the evening was to throw the written speech aside and take on all comers.”
If he had any sense he’d have realized that the best path through the evening led to the closest exit.
One odd feature of this episode is the involvement of two Federal Marshals in plainclothes. Reportedly they stopped by on their own based on a tip from an unkown source.
I'm thinking now that that tip likely came from an undercover federal agent.
Was that possible agent embedded with the radical Stanford student organizations that organized the protest or with the Stanford Federalist Society?
Recent history indicates that the Federalists should take a moment to vet their membership.
The Marshals' involvement is also an indication of the potential physical threat presented by the protesters which must have been shocking to the Judge.
Althouse appears to disregard this aspect but a wide angle photo taken from behind the Judge displaying the entire room shows that he was facing a physically intimidating situation.
The Marshals and their informant recognized the threat.
My only complaint with Judge Duncan is that he gave away a distress signal in a later interview - hand on top of head.
Robert Cook said...If you prefer to engage me now in an ad hoc discussion rather than listen to my remarks and have a conversation when I conclude my talk, then I will be happy to leave now."
This seems to ignore that getting him to "leave now" was explicitly the goal of at least some of the hecklers/protestors. They WANTED him to leave--they in fact wanted him not to be allowed on campus at all. Him leaving would be a complete victory and vindication of the heckler's veto: if we shout down this speaker and act disruptive enough we can prevent him from speaking and prevent the people who invited him from hearing his speech.
You can't really threaten someone with what they want.
He should have worn a longer "skirt", buried his "burden" to mitigate climate fears, avoided social mixing of trans/homosexuals and trans/bisexuals, and certainly trans/neos/sims et al. This is the model of Antifa mobbing vehicles, of SS BLM invading neighborhoods, Occupy... well, occupying cities, businesses, etc. Next time, wear a Pussy Hat to show you stand with genderfication, class-disordered ideologies, DIEversity, political congruence, and, of course, the wicked solution... integration of an ethical "Church" and State.
Althouse: "A truly savvy Duncan — anticipating the disruption, which he most certainly did — could have prepared a brilliant response to it and memorized it so that he'd be a towering victor and not the victim of the bad old students."
democracy... take a knee, beg, "donate".
It's a tricky business inviting someone to be subjected to 'cruel neutrality' without being accused of slipping into 'civility bullshit.'
It's always best if the mark doesn't know what's coming.
He could have...
...hauled his penis out and urinated on the students. Can we all at least agree that this would have been inappropriate still? (R Kelly excepted)
Robert Cook said...
He could have said something like, "I have been invited here to present some remarks, at the end of which you and others present may ask questions or engage me on matters discussed in my talk. If you prefer to engage me now in an ad hoc discussion rather than listen to my remarks and have a conversation when I conclude my talk, then I will be happy to leave now."
And why should some Red Guards / Brownshirts be able to deprive the students who wanted to hear Judge Duncan of their right to do so?
Oh, that's right, you're a nasty little fascist who insists that conservatives aren't human, and therefore don't have human rights
Ann Althouse said...
Duncan wasn't there to make an argument that was relevant to the students' concerns. He was launching into a mundane recitation of the role of the judiciary. A student interrupts him to say "We took Con Law!" That's what it seemed to be — intro to Article III.
So, because the first 4 minutes of his speech provide an introduction to the topic, you have a right to interrupt him?
That's a rather special claim
Judges do speeches like this all the time. If I were in the audience, I would have had no interest in the recitation he had scripted.
So what?
Are you the person who invited him?
No?
Then what you want doesn't matter.
What matters is what the people who invited him want.
Unless it's your position that, because they disagree with you, they have no rights, and just don't ever matter
It would have been much better if he showed he could think on his feet and get right to the point of saying clearly and directly why the offenses the students think he's committed were really good interpretations of the law -- opening up reasons that might feel at least somewhat compelling and fresh.
Christians have a right to the free expression of their religion
RFRA says that if the law doesn't explicitly grant itself a waiver to RFRA, then RFRA appies.
ObamaCare has no RFRA waiver
Therefore all ObamaCare rules must respect Christians' rights
It's not "fresh". Neither is 1 + 1 = 2
both are correct
If you have a problem with them, it's because you're an anti-christian bigot, and you're not going to be argued out of your position, any more than MLK was going to argue Bluu Connor into respecting his civil rights
Start at a higher level with that absorption of arguments and countering them. The judge was going before law students, and he should actively find the legal arguments they're trying to make
Can't find what doesn't exist.
Their "legal argument" is "that hurts my feelings, so you're not allowed to do it." The response is "Your position hurts my feelings, so you're not allowed to do it". To which the Red Guards reply "only our feelings matter"
Not a lot of room for intellectual argument ther
and focus the discussion for their benefit. There was chaos, and everyone had the opportunity to get out in front of it and show what they could do — to demonstrate "skill," to use your word.
The discussion wasn't there for the Left wing thugs' benefit. It was there for the benefit of the Fed Soc members who invited him.
Or is it your position that nothing is ever allowed to be for the benefit of Fed Soc members, because they are Untermenschen, and just don't count?
Woulda, coulda, shoulda... whatever.
The judge was there to present a talk titled "The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: Covid, Guns, and Twitter". Anybody uninterested in the topic was free to not attend. Shouting/heckling in an attempt to change the subject or shut down the speaker makes you a dick. Even if you have a clit. Simple as that.
You don't need a college education to understand that. In fact, from what I've read so far, a college education appears to be a hindrance in understanding.
“You're right. A truly savvy Duncan — anticipating the disruption, which he most certainly did — could have prepared a brilliant response to it and memorized it so that he'd be a towering victor and not the victim of the bad old students.”
Why should he have to? Some seem to have an appreciation for China’s cultural revolution, but this Gang of Twenty or whatever should face consequences. Suspension and then - if they choose to violate policy again - expel their sorry asses.
If you prefer to engage me now in an ad hoc discussion rather than listen to my remarks and have a conversation when I conclude my talk, then I will be happy to leave now."
Yeah up until that last clause you were doing fine.
With the benefit of hindsight and sitting on my comfy couch without anyone yelling at me, I think the beginning of your statement was good but then add “if you do not stop interrupting my planned speech and if the administrators sitting in this room continue to allow this violation of the rules that they had assured me they’d enforce, I will stand here silently for the duration so that their bad faith will be exposed.”
Not that I think our Hostess is likely to change her position at this point, but if she were to have watched the video of that DEI dean rather than simply listen to the audio, I think that her "intervention" was simply a planned hit job intended to maximize the impact of her hate. The rest of it was merely a performance with the hope of giving her deniability of her actual intentions...which our hostess has certainly endorsed. Normally, Ann's brain works far better than this.
- Krumhorn
so Professora sums up as follows == even before Judge Duncan could deliver his "prepared remarks" some students were able to expectorate their "not-at-all-prepared remarks"
AITA?
The Carmelites were big on dialogue and look what happened to them in the previous Reign of Terror.
Admittedly, I have not reviewed the entire video of what happened but something thing is missing: The Judge was an invited guest of the FedSoc, and they should have known that his presence would be controversial. Someone from FedSoc should have stepped and told the dean she was out of line, that her diatribe against this Judge was inappropriate to their guest and unacceptable, besides being immature, stupid, and pedantic, and that anyone who did not want to hear what the Judge had to say should leave - immediately or be forcibly removed.
jvb
It's funny that many of you who condemn the students for jumping all over Duncan are jumping all over me.
The most absurd argument yet.
(shakes head and walks away)
---Or is it your position that ... [Greg]
Greg, your debating is inspired. However.... have you considered the possibility that Althouse took a position a bit prematurely and, having been ratioed, is just not ever going to admit error?
So -- what does Meade say at these moments? : )
I would guess he stops painting, washes the brush, and says: Look at that wall! It makes me feel like having a glass of chardonnay, how about you?
Then plays 100% dumb. Or maybe he says, you sure got the hits the last coupla days babe! Althouse nods sagely and opens The Mill on the Floss.
My likely final comment regarding this very dead horse of a topic:
1. Right-wing students invited a right-wing judge to give a speech on routine law topics of interest to the right-wing
2. Left-wing students conspired as a team to disrupt and repurpose / censor content they wanted to suppress
3. There was a commonplace kerfuffle because left-wing people praise those who bully heretics in Sacred Church University
4. Ann Althouse posted many tangential thoughts unrelated to common human decency and respect for guest speakers
5. At least 90% of her responders disagreed, but this dead horse continues on as an unkillable zombie
6. I concluded that Ann Althouse shares the never say die trait of the lefties of Sacred Church University
7. I concluded that our society is much more likely to have a violent civil war or genocide before the Woke find peace, as they are indeed never say die zealots and as Althouse has previously often been sensible and moderate
The first time right-wing people attempting this disruptive strategy at a university, the DOJ would have them in chains and tarred as domestic terrorists or insurrectionists. Witness Jordan Peterson. Those who have objected to lefty topics at local school board meetings already suffer from the creepy feds. We are living in an era of fatal Woke projection and fatal lack of self-awareness. Shakespeare would have a field day with this tragedy.
Althouse has convinced me. The judge was absolutely in the wrong for not engaging with the student hecklers, who berated him for, among other shocking failings relevant to being a judge, an apparent inability to "find the clit." Now, applying some cruel neutrality, I also conclude that, when MTG heckled Biden during the State of the Union address, he should have dropped his prepared speech and tried to engage in a dialog with her. Who knows? Maybe he could have changed her mind. The fact that he didn't even try leads me to conclude that he's not qualified to be president.
(I fear I lost quite a few IQ points just writing something that stupid.)
Althouse has convinced me. The judge was absolutely in the wrong for not engaging with the student hecklers, who berated him for, among other shocking failings relevant to being a judge, an apparent inability to "find the clit." Now, applying some cruel neutrality, I also conclude that, when MTG heckled Biden during the State of the Union address, he should have dropped his prepared speech and tried to engage in a dialog with her. Who knows? Maybe he could have changed her mind. The fact that he didn't even try leads me to conclude that he's not qualified to be president.
(I fear I lost quite a few IQ points just writing something that stupid.)
I find it disturbing and fascinating that our Perfesser has transmogrified this incident to strongly imply that if the Judge were smarter, more interesing, and competent he would have prepared his own response to the screeching mob that he knew would seek to silence him.
But no... he naively assumed he would be speaking to law students, not the feral imbeciles who shouted him down.
So, it's HIS fault. HE fucked up.
What a perverse "take". It's a lot like arguing that a robbery victim "should have known" he needed a pistol before going into a bad neighborhood, thereby exonerating the thug who killed him.
"You're right. A truly savvy Duncan — anticipating the disruption, which he most certainly did — could have prepared a brilliant response to it and memorized it so that he'd be a towering victor and not the victim of the bad old students."
Why should Duncan have anticipated the disruption? He spoke a few years ago at Standford without any disruption.
Give it up, commenters. This is Althouse at peak stampy-foot braindead lib feminist.
Not really, but she does like to troll her readership once in awhile.
Student: "The Constitution was written by white male slave owners, we dont' care what it says"
Now, do tell us how Duncan responds. Do tell us what brilliant argument he can make to the amoral monster who has no principles (a principle is a rule you follow even when it gives an answer you don't like. The Student protesters only rule is "we win"), who is busy violating Dunca's and the Fed Soc students free speech rights?
Well, he could have said, "The slave owners were Democrats and so are you. You defend them."
This entire subject is getting a bit tedious. Interesting? Sure. But it's time to move on to something else. Hopefully AA won't be posting again on this topic!
This sort of nonsense (shouting/shutting down debate, almost exclusively being done by one side) seems to keep happening. Conservatives (some of them, anyway) are having a hard time accepting how vile and disgusting progressives can be and in response, what do progressives do? Smirk and say "Hold my beer".
I don't know how close we are to the point where normal people say "Fuck that shit" and things start to get real, but we're closer today than we were yesterday. And when it does, it'll no doubt be the fault of those who just wanted to be left alone to live their lives and raise their families.
Ann Althouse is having a Scott Adams moment
A student interrupts him to say ‘We took Con Law!’
Others here have hit the high points of disagreement with the hostess's remarks/opinions on this matter, and far better argued than I might dare to attempt.
Apart from all that, however, what has uniquely struck me as unbelievably arrogant and appalling and puerile from a law student in a presumably praiseworthy and nationally-recognized law school is that opening quote.
...as though because she sat through one class in constitutional law, she now is such an expert on that topic that there is nothing more to learn, and most certainly nothing of interest and value from a 5th Circuit judge who's spent ~20 years in the practice and judicial interpretation of ... the law?
Would you hire that person to represent you, or your company? Would you want that person sitting in judgment over you?
The wisest man knows that he does not know what he does not know, and holds open his mind, that he may be receptive to that passing chance of a key germ of knowledge that may yet prove useful in, if not determinative of, a future choice or decision.
It would be ironic if someone who disagreed with Althouse were to erase her entire blog and thereby silence her.
I wonder how she would feel about that...
"...If you prefer to engage me now in an ad hoc discussion rather than listen to my remarks and have a conversation when I conclude my talk, then I will be happy to leave now."
Thus giving Cook the outcome he desires. Perhaps the middle man should be eliminated by texting undesirable speakers that they would be shouted down. Saves time and money. Right Cook?
Also:
"... prepared a brilliant response to it and memorized it so that he'd be a towering victor and not the victim..." I do this ALL the time hen my spouse is mad at me. So far I'm batting zero. One suspects the Judge's chances would be similar.
Well, he could have said, "The slave owners were Democrats and so are you. You defend them."
To be fair to Democrats, lest we be guilty of exercising liberal license to indulge diversity [dogma], Democrats NOW are not the Democrats of yesteryear, they have progressed.
Ann Althouse said...
It's funny that many of you who condemn the students for jumping all over Duncan are jumping all over me.
We condemn the students for denying Duncan and the FedSoc students their free speech rights
Please tell us which of us are currently denying you your free speech rights? I will happily condemn anyone who is doing such a vile thing.
What I see us doing is pointing out that the position you are taking is vile, monstrous, and utterly without any justification.
We have repeatedly engaged with all your claims
You, OTOH, have never engaged with the reality (that I saw) that "your right to free speech ends where my scheduled speech begins."
The Brownshirts / Red Guards had the right to come listen to Duncan, then try to ask him challenging questions during the Q & A
They had the right to completely avoid his talk.
What neither they nor the DIE Dean had the slightest shred of a right to do was to try to heckle him into silence, or to force him to listen to their speech, their desires, their bullshit concerns.
A fundamental, core part of freedom of speech is the freedom NOT to listen.
That is your PERSONAL freedom to ignore someone. Which can not be conflated with a "right" to prevent OTHER people from listening to someone.
Judge Duncan has the absolute, fundamental human right NOT to give a shit about the concerns, desires, hopes, and fears of left wingers.
Just like they have the right to do the same about "Trumpists"
When you violate that right, or defend / excuse / justify others violating that right, YOU are the one in the wrong
Student: "The Constitution was written by white male slave owners, we dont' care what it says"
Some, many were anti-slavery, anti-diversity (e.g. DIEversity), pro-life, but, then, for reasons of foreign and domestic intrigue, they accepted a 3/5 compromise, as they accept the 1-2 compromise NOW, in order to calm the progress of affirmative action and collateral damage.
It would be ironic if someone who disagreed with Althouse were to erase her entire blog and thereby silence her.
Cruel and unusual. From the left, or the left-right nexus is leftist, perhaps.
I don't think a libertarian from the right, or a conservative centrist, would relish abortive intent and affirmative action without due process.
@Ann: "Duncan wasn't there to make an argument that was relevant to the students' concerns. He was launching into a mundane recitation of the role of the judiciary. A student interrupts him to say "We took Con Law!" That's what it seemed to be — intro to Article III."
If I needed a perfect example of a non sequitur, this would be it.
I have raised this point, as have many others: the Stanford code of conduct absolutely prohibits heckling. Getting to any justification of the Maoists conduct, or Dean Steinbachs prevaricating, you have to explain why the absolute, fundamental, prohibition somehow is suspended in this case. You haven't, nor has Mystial, Chuck, Inga, et al.
And we haven't even gotten to the substance of Judge Duncan's opinions.
Popehat decides on moral equivalency. Popehat is an ass. He writes "He’s known for things like monologuing in self-congratulatory fashion about why he won't address an incarcerated litigant by their preferred pronouns." (link in original to the majority opinion) I am not a lawyer, but I did at least peruse the opinion, and see nothing like self-congratulatory monologuing. On the contrary, I saw an opinion based upon existing case law and court practice, that acknowledges the inescapable issues attending acquiescing to such demands.
Scotland has acquiesced to those demands. And housed a male rapist in a female prison.
The subsequent link goes to a Vox piece, which at least goes to some effort to explain Judge Duncan's opinions. Where "some effort" is an exercise in question begging nearly as prototypical as your non sequitor. The moment the characterization of the argument as "United States v. Varner is not one of those cases. The main thing at stake in Varner is whether three judges will treat a woman with courtesy or with needless cruelty", then all possibility of valid contradictory argument is foreclosed. The conclusion is foregone. It is virtuous. Anything to the contrary is evil, tout court.
That is exactly where these Maoist students are. As progressives, they fall straight into the inherent tautological trap of progressivism: We are progressives because we think progressive thoughts, and they are progressive because we think them. All thoughts to the contrary are, by definition, down to stupidity, ignorance, or malevolence.
Therefore, any engagement with such thoughts is, at best, a waste of time and effort. Stupid, ignorant, or malevolent thoughts deserve suppression, by any means necessary.
Dean Steinbach, to her infinite discredit, is very much in their league. I'd bet dollars to donuts she has never read anything Judge Duncan has written. And I'd bet ten times that she has never once seriously entertained any argument contradicting DIE. The odds of a copy of "Cynical Theories" being within shouting distance of her synapses is zero.
You have completely failed to engage in the most pivotal elements of the argument against Dean Steinbach and the Cultural Revolution wannabees. You have engaged in mind reading, and multiple excursions into coulda-shoulda-woulda land.
In so doing, you have failed to understand that Dean Steinbach in particular, and DIA in general, is inherently antagonistic to everything other than their ideological purity.
Good luck with that.
Brylinski said...
"It would be ironic if someone who disagreed with Althouse were to erase her entire blog and thereby silence her.
I wonder how she would feel about that..."
Like the rest of us. An act of a child.
"Hopefully AA won't be posting again on this topic!"
LMAO. This is like a Trump story on a left wing blog. Take a look at the posts on this subject in the last week and realize that the desire to tell a woman she is wrong has blown up traffic on this blog for the last week.
You idiots can't stop telling her how wrong she is and yet think that will end her posting on the topic with the most clicks all month.
Boomers truly are digital illiterates and unaware, just as millennials have been saying.
“You idiots can't stop telling her how wrong she is and yet think that will end her posting on the topic with the most clicks all month.”
By the language you use, you sound just like a Stanford law student. As far as ending her posting on this topic, she should do whatever she wants. If anyone gets tired of any topic, they can just keep scrolling.
Althouse's arguments in this chapter of the saga just sound as though she has a personal beef with man, so all's fair in war.
What transpired there was the opposite of civilization.
The 3/5th's Compromise was trotted out in my junior high days and, to this day, the Left wants to say that it showed that the South thought that slaves were only 3/5th's of a person. Nothing could be further from the truth. The cowardly North DID NOT WANT to count slaves at all and only would allow these persons, 3/5ths human and worthy of census representation in the House, to count as LESS THAN.
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
Stanford’s Policy on Campus Disruptions:
“It is a violation of University policy for a member of the faculty, staff, or student body to: 1. Prevent or disrupt the effective carrying out of a University function or approved activity, such as lectures, meetings, interviews, ceremonies, the conduct of University business in a University office, and public events. 2. Obstruct the legitimate movement of any person about the campus or in any University building or facility.”
This event was organized by a student group so it was not a University function. It was perhaps an “approved activity.” The only example of that given in the policy is “intruding upon or refusing to leave a private interview.” Was the event prevented or disrupted from being effectively carried out? It seems to have gotten to the end with time to spare.
The policy also states: “It should be understood that while the above are examples of extraordinarily disruptive behavior, the application of the Policy also takes situational factors into consideration. Thus, for example, conduct appropriate at a political rally might constitute a violation of the Policy on Campus Disruptions if it occurred within a classroom.”
The Stanford Federalist Society describes itself as a “group of libertarians and conservatives interested in the current state of the legal order” so it is a political group. They invited other students to join them “for a lunch with Judge Kyle Duncan of the Fifth Circuit.” So which standard of behavior applies, the one for political rallies or the one for classrooms? Clearly, under the policy, there are at least two standards.
And also, what is the role of the host, the Stanford Federalist Society? It is my experience with lunch speakers that people like to talk to each other during the lunch, and someone from the group has to quell that before the speech can start and sometimes during the speech itself. The Stanford Federalist Society seems to have pitted their Judge guest against their fellow student guests, and then stepped out of the way, when they should have stepped up and between them.
Judge Duncan did try to argue with the student protesters that this is not the way you treat a guest. But again, his host was the Stanford Federalist Society, not the students who were protesting him. They were also guests, and he was trading insults with them. The Stanford Federalist Society didn’t intervene or even ask the student protesters to leave if they wouldn’t let Judge Duncan speak. Dean Steinbach did.
Perhaps Judge Duncan’s lamest attempt was when he compared how someone like him would be treated at his own law school with how he was being treated at Stanford Law School, concluding “And obviously in this school, the inmates have gotten control of the asylum.” That was met with raucous applause and cheering. He did try to do what Ann Althouse’s imagines.
I wonder, if Judge Duncan had won the exchange, would the far right be calling for Dean Steinbach to be fired and the student protesters to be disciplined or expelled? No, and that’s how you know that he fell short.
Everyone here who is dumping on Professor Althouse, well, why don't you go and start your own blog? Oh, I know. Because nobody in the whole world gives a shit about what you think. Maybe you would get 4 or 5 followers, if you're lucky. Althouse has the ear of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Atlantic, etc. You have the ears of Dumbo.
So what about the rights of the students who went to hear this judge speak, and learn about why he holds his opinions?
By making it about the protest (and the protesters) you miss the point.
This is not about dialog but censorship. And I'm sure dissenting students learned they had better keep their opinions to themselves.
Now justify the sexual and racial slurs, buttercup.
I wonder, if Judge Duncan had won the exchange, would the far right be calling for Dean Steinbach to be fired and the student protesters to be disciplined or expelled? No, and that’s how you know that he fell short.
Big assumption there. I would still want the students disciplined, to exactly the same extent that a pro-life student group would be disciplined if they'd used the same tactics against a speaker invited by a pro-choice student group. That the speaker "won the exchange" in your hypothetical doesn't change the fact that the students behaved grossly improperly.
I never wanted the DEI dean fired; I want the entire DEI function recognized as the destructive, Orwellian force that it is, and summarily dismantled.
One departing question: if you were in that room with activists screeching racial and sexual slurs at you and your husband while five officials from your school sneered at you, would you permit it? Would you let people tell you that your cis bias means you and Meade can't sexually satisfy each other? Would you let people scream that you hate blacks and especially black women to your face after you went to the trouble of preparing a law lecture for them? Do you think your fellow.academicians deserve this? This is what you are defending.
Would you stand there and have your speech be delayed as you were slurred personally for half an hour? In a law classroom?
Would you stand there and submit to a mob without defending your husband and yourself and your presumable non-racism?
This is what you are defending. Pretty pathetic. At least own it.
Lonejustice/anonymouse, how many bills has Ann passed? How about you?
How do you know us? You know nothing about virtually any of us. I've turned down the Times and The Guardian because they are dishonest. Maybe you're the nobody.
What Jamie said @ 7:30am.
The 3/5 compromise was designed to mitigate progress by limiting slavers and diversitists's influence while domestic and foreign intrigue posed an existential threat to the viability of the American experiment.
Mark said...
LMAO. This is like a Trump story on a left wing blog. Take a look at the posts on this subject in the last week and realize that the desire to tell a woman she is wrong has blown up traffic on this blog for the last week
.
Poor Mark, as a fascist with no principles himself, he just can't understand how anyone else could actually be animated by principles, or think that free speech is important
Blogger n.n said...
Student: "The Constitution was written by white male slave owners, we don't care what it says"
Some, many were anti-slavery, anti-diversity (e.g. DIEversity), pro-life, but, then, for reasons of foreign and domestic intrigue, they accepted a 3/5 compromise, as they accept the 1-2 compromise NOW, in order to calm the progress of affirmative action and collateral damage.
The 3/5 compromise was a way of decreasing the political power of slave owners.
Now it is a filter: anyone who complains about the 3/5 compromise as "racist" establishes their historical ignorance and complete stupidity
Left Bank of the Charles said...
Stanford’s Policy on Campus Disruptions:
“It is a violation of University policy for a member of the faculty, staff, or student body to: 1. Prevent or disrupt the effective carrying out of a University function or approved activity, such as lectures, meetings, interviews, ceremonies, the conduct of University business in a University office, and public events. 2. Obstruct the legitimate movement of any person about the campus or in any University building or facility.”
This event was organized by a student group so it was not a University function. It was perhaps an “approved activity.” The only example of that given in the policy is “intruding upon or refusing to leave a private interview.” Was the event prevented or disrupted from being effectively carried out? It seems to have gotten to the end with time to spare.
What part of "official scheduled student group event" doesn't qualify as "approved activity" for you?
Oh, that's right, it's being done by Untermenschen, so that makes it "unapproved", right Mr brownshirt?
Hmm, let's see, the invited Speaker couldn't speak because he was constantly being being shouted down by thugs organized by the DIE Dean, who then hijacked the event to effectively give a longer speach than the invited speaker.
Now, if you have a functioning brain, that qualifies as "Prevent or disrupt the effective carrying out". So what's your story Mark?
n.n said...
Well, he could have said, "The slave owners were Democrats and so are you. You defend them."
To be fair to Democrats, lest we be guilty of exercising liberal license to indulge diversity [dogma], Democrats NOW are not the Democrats of yesteryear, they have progressed.
There is one Party that officially demands every level in the US, that is the Democrat Party.
So no, I don't believe it's fair to claim they've changed in any way on that front
Having read all the comments, I must agree.
"Oh, that's right, you're a nasty little fascist who insists that conservatives aren't human, and therefore don't have human rights."
EEEEEEEE! WRONG! But thank you for playing today.
"With the benefit of hindsight and sitting on my comfy couch without anyone yelling at me, I think the beginning of your statement was good but then add 'if you do not stop interrupting my planned speech and if the administrators sitting in this room continue to allow this violation of the rules that they had assured me they’d enforce, I will stand here silently for the duration so that their bad faith will be exposed.'”
Yes, that would have been the best way to go.
"The Judge was an invited guest of the FedSoc, and they should have known that his presence would be controversial. Someone from FedSoc should have stepped and told the dean she was out of line, that her diatribe against this Judge was inappropriate to their guest and unacceptable, besides being immature, stupid, and pedantic, and that anyone who did not want to hear what the Judge had to say should leave - immediately or be forcibly removed."
Another good way to go.
"Thus giving Cook the outcome he desires. Perhaps the middle man should be eliminated by texting undesirable speakers that they would be shouted down. Saves time and money. Right Cook?"
Uh, no. I had no idea who the judge was or what his speaking topic was or his political views or affiliation. I hadn't really perused the summary of the situation that closely. I just felt that any invited speaker shouldn't have to stand and be assailed or humiliated or forced to apologize for himself by a motley of ill-behaved children thinking themselves to be informed adults. Another couple of commenters have suggested better tactics that could have been taken, as noted above.
"The 3/5th's Compromise was trotted out in my junior high days and, to this day, the Left wants to say that it showed that the South thought that slaves were only 3/5th's of a person. Nothing could be further from the truth. The cowardly North DID NOT WANT to count slaves at all and only would allow these persons, 3/5ths human and worthy of census representation in the House, to count as LESS THAN."
Wrong. It is the slave states that really didn't want the slaves counted at all...as actual voting citizens. THey south wanted slaves "counted as people" (in legal fiction only) solely to increase the slave states' representation in Congress. The slaves would have been designated "people" only for the benefit of the slave states' accrual of additional Representatives (and power) in the House, but the newly fraudulently designated "people" wouldn't (and didn't) gain any rights: they would have remained (and did remain) only chattel, slaves with no voting or citizenship rights for themselves.
It was a cynical power play by the slave states and they won it, even if they gained 2/5ths a person fewer for each slave than they had wanted. Though they acquired lower additional representation in Congress than they had wanted, they still gained more representation in Congress than they were warranted counting the number of actual free citizens in their states. The Northern states should have rejected it outright and given the slave states an ultimatum: free all the slaves and give them full voting rights and full rights of citizenship or be granted NO additional representation in Congress.
"The 3/5 compromise was a way of decreasing the political power of slave owners."
Nope! Put more succinctly than in my previous post, the 3/5 compromise increased the political power of the slave owners.
@Robert Cook: “ Nope! Put more succinctly than in my previous post, the 3/5 compromise increased the political power of the slave owners.”
Relative to what?
The Three-fifths Compromise includes the word “compromise” for a reason.
What if the non-slave states had they pursued an absolute outcome, and the slave states walked. Is there any chance slavery would have persisted far longer?
Cookie is wrong, as usual. The Left loves their negroes, even when they didn't. Leftist revisionist history. Cookie proves me right by repeating the same old crap --- next he'll be telling me that all the hateful Democrat racists (redundant) in the south did that mythical switch beginning in the late 60s. George Wallace was a DEMOCRAT, you tool.
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
"Cookie is wrong, as usual. The Left loves their negroes, even when they didn't. Leftist revisionist history. Cookie proves me right by repeating the same old crap --- next he'll be telling me that all the hateful Democrat racists (redundant) in the south did that mythical switch beginning in the late 60s. George Wallace was a DEMOCRAT, you tool."
I'm not wrong, (as usual).
As for switching parties in the late 60s, a good number of Southern Democrats did begin switching party affiliation to became Republicans because of their dislike of LBJ (a Democrat) signing the Civil Rights Law into being. Nixon in 1972 also capitalized on this (and on the still useful camouflage cause of "states' rights") by exerting his efforts (successfully) to convince southern Dems to switch parties.
In short, many of the racist southern Dems of that era you idiots keep trying to bang over the head of the current day Dems are now Republicans!
Cookie the Leftist: "As for switching parties in the late 60s, a good number of Southern Democrats did begin switching party affiliation to became Republicans because of their dislike of LBJ (a Democrat) signing the Civil Rights Law into being. Nixon in 1972 also capitalized on this (and on the still useful camouflage cause of "states' rights") by exerting his efforts (successfully) to convince southern Dems to switch parties.
"In short, many of the racist southern Dems of that era you idiots keep trying to bang over the head of the current day Dems are now Republicans!"
Note that Cookie cannot provide any evidence of this "Democrat Big Lie". No links or cites. Here's just a simple Quora inquiry:
https://www.quora.com/Did-the-Republican-and-Democrat-parties-really-switch-platforms-in-the-60%E2%80%99s
Here is the truth, that perpetual liar Cookie doesn't believe:
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://assets.ctfassets.net/qnesrjodfi80/4HwShLMThuei4IEgoMCwWg/7b8f0c09b9588543fa96a5d4ba21a8dc/swain-why_did_the_democratic_south_become_republican-transcript.pdf
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
"'@Robert Cook: Nope! Put more succinctly than in my previous post, the 3/5 compromise increased the political power of the slave owners.'
"Relative to what?"
Relative to their gaining zero additional representation in the House and additional electoral votes if they had not agreed to the compromise.
"The Three-fifths Compromise includes the word 'compromise' for a reason."
Yes, because each side gave in to a degree: the founders wanted to ensure the union would be ratified, so they granted the south the compromise of agreeing to treat the slaves as 3/5s of a person for purposes of increasing the south's political power. The founders saw it as better to agree to this compromise rather than insist on refusing the south any additional power on the basis of counting "property" as "people," and see the southern states refuse to join the union. The south agreed to the compromise because they acquired more political power than they were really entitled to given that these "3/5ths person" had NO rights, NO freedom, and NO voting rights. It was equivalent to granting farm states extra representation in Congress on the basis of the total inventory of livestock owned by the states' farmers.
"What if the non-slave states had they pursued an absolute outcome, and the slave states walked. Is there any chance slavery would have persisted far longer?"
I don't know, of course, but possibly so. There was a possibility the union would have fractured before becoming a whole if the Southern states walked. A south that was not part of the union probably would not have had any incentive to abolish the practice of slavery. It took a war to end it, after all. It is easy to understand the motives of both sides for agreeing to the compromise.
"Here is the truth...."
Mmmm...Marcus, your URL is inoperable, so "the truth" can't be revealed!
Robert Cook, you missed my point. The 3/5 compromise provided the slave owners some degree of power. Casting it as an increase is pejorative. 3/5 is what it is. The slave owners had less power than 5/5, and more power than 0/5.
Why didn’t you state that the 3/5 compromise gave the slave owners as little power as was possible?
After all, that is precisely what it did.
"Robert Cook, you missed my point. The 3/5 compromise provided the slave owners some degree of power. Casting it as an increase is pejorative. 3/5 is what it is. The slave owners had less power than 5/5, and more power than 0/5.
"Why didn’t you state that the 3/5 compromise gave the slave owners as little power as was possible?
"After all, that is precisely what it did."
No. The slave states would have had "as little power as possible"--that is, the appropriate amount of power relative to their population of free citizens--if they had not been granted approval to have their representation in Congress inflated artificially by counting 3/5 of each slave--non-voting, not-citizen chattel, property--as "people."
"Their decision had pernicious and far-reaching effects. As critics of southern power understood, the compromise artificially inflated the South’s influence in the House and Electoral College from the founding of the nation to the Civil War. In the first Congress, southern states were apportioned 30 of 65 seats in the House (46%). Without the three-fifths clause, the South would have been apportioned only 18 seats in a smaller House of 44 seats (41%). In the first Congress, then, the three-fifths clause accounted for an 11% bonus in southern power.
"In the Electoral College, the small-state bonus and the federal ratio combined again to grant the southern states disproportionate power. Under 1788 apportionment, southern states commanded 42 of 91 electoral votes (46%), despite being home to only 40 percent of the national free population. In the South, then, each individual commanded a larger share of each electoral vote than in the North — 107% of the national average, compared to the North’s 96%. And after reapportionment under the first federal census (1790), each electoral vote in the South represented only 20,525 people, while each in the North represented 25,590, a difference of 25%. Under the apportionment for 1792, each free southerner’s share of an electoral vote was 113% of the national average, while the comparable figure for northerners’ was only 91%.
"For the next seventy-eight years, the three-fifths clause would exercise extraordinary and far-reaching effects on American politics. In no other slaveholding society of the Atlantic was any slave power ever given such an enormous gift."
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