"You might read comments somewhere that I was, at some point, given 'permission' to deliver my remarks by the DEI Assistant Dean, Steinbach. Nonsense."

"For a good 20-30 minutes (I’m estimating), I was ruthlessly mocked and shouted down by a mob after every third word. And then Steinbach launched into her bizarre prepared speech where she simultaneously 'welcomed' me to campus and told me how horrible and hurtful I was to the community. Then she said I should be free to deliver my remarks. Try delivering a lecture under those circumstances. Basically, they wanted me to make a hostage video. No thanks. The whole thing was a staged public shaming, and after I realized that I refused to play along."

Said Judge Kyle Duncan, interviewed by Rod Dreher (at Substack).

So, the judge declined to deliver his speech after Steinbach quieted the crowd for him. He's also now calling for her to be fired. He says it was a "staged public shaming," but that's the same thing as saying that the protest was planned. He and his supporters are engaging in staged public shaming too, and they want a person not just disrupted on one evening but deprived of her job. That's tit for tat and a refusal to stand down.

I'm contemplating whether to give this post my "civility bullshit" tag. I'm against one-sided calls to stand down in the name of etiquette. The students protested, as students do. They're not polite. Should they be more polite? Don't say yes just because they're on the other side from you. But in this case, Duncan is not standing down. He's attacking the students harshly and he wants Dean Steinbach — who stepped up when he asked for an administrator to restore order — fired.

Duncan makes a general argument for civility in a law school. Lawyers must speak "with care, precision, and respect for your opponent." What the protesting students were doing, he says, is "the opposite of what it means to be a lawyer." Lawyers never get angry and shout and cut off other people who are trying to speak?

And is a law school just a machine for turning young people into practicing lawyers? No, you can do a lot of things with a law degree, and you can go to any school for your own purposes, including a plan to become a political activist or even to acquire a deep understanding of the subject matter. 

It's not inherent in the nature of law school that you must meet high standards of etiquette. The school may want to provide a welcoming space to its guests, but the students have ideas of their own. How do you convince them to hear out speakers they revile? I don't think it's by telling law students they need to act like lawyers in a courtroom. That's not persuasive! Of course, a federal judge is used to experiencing extreme deference in the courtroom. That's not the rough and tumble of a public speech.

Here's Duncan's direct attack on Steinbach:

Instead of explaining to the students that they should respect an invited guest at the law school (yes, a federal judge, but really this applies to any guest), even one they might disagree with passionately, she launched into a bizarre (and already printed out) monologue where she accused me of causing “hurt” and “division” in the law school community by my mere presence on campus. So, this had the effect of validating the mob. Then, at the same time, she pretended to “welcome” me to campus so that I could express my views. All of this was delivered, as anyone can see from the video, in the voice and idiom of a therapist.

He's criticizing her voice. He's tone policing!

I found it profoundly creepy.

He doesn't need protection from creepiness. If the tables were turned, and he were the lefty, wouldn't conservatives call him a "snowflake"?

It was the language of “compassion” and “feelings,” but it came across as deeply controlling and aggressive.

It "came across as".... You're calling for a person to lose her job. You, with your life tenure guarantee. Your subjective experience is worth hearing about, but it doesn't establish that she did something terribly wrong. She had a hard task to carry out, and you ought to try to understand how it felt, subjectively, to her.  

Many people are talking about the weird metaphor she used: “Was the juice worth the squeeze?” I had no idea what she was talking about, but at some point I realized that she meant, “Yes, you were invited to campus, and we ‘welcome’ you. But your presence here is causing such hurt and division. So, was what you were going to talk about really worth all this pain you’re causing by coming here?” In other words, it’s just a folksy way of giving these students a heckler’s veto.

But it's not a heckler's veto, because she was clearing the way for you to speak. She was caring for the students' concerns and simultaneously helping you.  She was engaging in an intellectual consideration of the issues of protest and the right to hear a speaker. Notice the question mark: "Was the juice worth the squeeze?" It's an important question, and she answered it in your favor while also supporting the students.

If they hate you enough, then surely it wasn’t worth your coming to campus. Apply that twisted idea to the civil rights movement, and see where you end up. It isn’t on the side of the people marching across the Selma bridge.

You reject their analogies, and I'm pretty sure they'll reject that one of yours. 

In other words, what the dean was preaching is the exact opposite of the law of free speech. We protect the speaker from the mob, not the mob from the speaker.

Was there a threat of physical violence? No. Do we protect the speaker from the words of the "mob"? Duncan must know it's not "the exact opposite of the law of free speech." This wasn't a case of the speaker being punished for riling up the crowd. It was only a case of the crowd drowning out the speaker's speech with more speech. 

And here was a dean of one of the best law schools in the world using the exact opposite of that basic principle to silence a sitting federal judge....

How was she silencing you? She was clearing the way for you, she just took longer to do it than you would have liked and she acknowledged the feelings and opinions of the protesters as she did it.

Duncan returns to the idea of a law school as the manufacturer of lawyers:

[T]he whole point of law school is to train bright-yet-unformed young minds to “think like a lawyer.” You’ve seen The Paper Chase, of course. The brilliant professor Kingsfield humbles the first year law students with his withering Socratic interrogation. Now we’ve evidently turned that model upside down.

Has he seen the movie "The Paper Chase"?! Kingsfield isn't the hero. The law student is, and the film audience is on the side of the student. The film turns that model upside down!

Ah, but Duncan's idea is that he — in the classroom — not as a professor, but an outside speaker — ought to have been respected and revered like the old-fashioned law prof. In that light, he spoofs:

The first year law students ridicule and silence Kingsfield for his cis-hetero-normativity, and then Kingsfield is publicly disciplined by the assistant DEI dean for harming the community’s sense of “belonging” by expecting them to recite a case.

Duncan was not "publicly disciplined." He was interrupted by rude noise from students, and the DEI dean restored order using an overlong speech he didn't enjoy. The dean invited the students to leave the room and they did. He was never pushed to help them feel that they belonged.

What did Duncan actually say after order was restored? He says he declined to give his prepared remarks. So what did he do instead? Did he rise to the occasion? Is there video of what went on after Steinbach spoke? I'd like to see it.