If you get the balance wrong, Ms. Strossen said, then you risk chilling speech on the other side....
Ms. Strossen said she was struck that [a week later, when she appeared on a panel at Yale], there were no protesters of any kind. “I worry that maybe the reason that there weren’t even nondisruptive protests,” she said, “is students were too afraid that they would be subject to discipline or doxxing.”
Rosenberger said that he had been upset by Ms. Steinbach’s remarks in the lecture hall but that she had been something of a “scapegoat” for the university’s broader failure to protect speech.
He said that he wished an official had stepped to the podium and warned students that further disruption would be in violation of the university’s free-speech policy — but that Ms. Steinbach, as D.E.I. dean, was not that messenger.
“If she was the administrator whose job was to enforce the no-disruption policy, then yeah, she totally failed, but that’s not her job description,” Mr. Rosenberger said. “People have called her stupid and incompetent. She’s a smart and good person who was just put in a really bad spot.”
The school needs to take responsibility both for its free-speech policy and for whatever policy is embodied in "diversity, equity and inclusion." It can't hire a D.E.I. dean and then trust the free-speech policy to her and then push all blame onto her when the free-speech policy is inadequately enforced. It is the school as a whole, not Steinbach, that deserves the blame.
I'm selecting material from the end of the article. What's at the beginning — like the headline — is praising the law school dean, Jenny S. Martinez. I consider that a smokescreen. I wonder how much this article was tweaked. The photograph under the headline is not of the person named in the headline, Martinez, but Steinbach. There's a second photo of Steinbach, too. Both photos are taken in a pleasingly arty interior — her home? the law school? — and dramatically lit. There's no photo of Martinez at all, just a photo of Rosenberger and a photo of the exterior of the law school.
There is a quote from Martinez, from an email to the NYT, saying that "when Judge Duncan asked for an administrator to help restore order," the administrators in the room (who?!) displayed a "lack of clear communication," and it just somehow happened — "[r]egardless of what should have happened up to that point" — that Steinbach stepped up to the podium. Who declined to step up? Why didn't the law school have a plan? Who other than Steinbach thought the D.E.I. dean was the right one to quell the fracas?
This NYT article is all mixed up. There are hints of awareness of the broader level of this problem, but the threads that should be followed are only mentioned and ignored.
There is this stop-gap quote from of University of Michigan conlawprof, Julian Davis Mortenson, who makes the point I have been making all along:
“Law schools need to have plans and protocols in place for controversies like this, which are going to happen with increasing frequency. Stanford was not adequately prepared.... An administrator on the ground, in a room literally full of shouting people, got them to stop shouting and also insisted that they should listen to the speech.”
Focusing on how Steinbach might have done better is missing the point!
Posts
72 comments:
"It can't hire a D.E.I. dean and then trust the free-speech policy to her and then push all blame onto her when the free-speech policy is inadequately enforced. It is the school as a whole, not Steinbach, that deserves the blame."
Ms. Althouse has made this point several times now, and I fully agree. Interesting that the college wants to punish Steinbach, and that the MAGA folks here also seem to think it's her head that should be on a platter. She did her job as assigned, took on the additional duty of trying to keep the peace at this event, and is hung out to dry.
No hecklers' vetoes, is the rule. Give your own talk or use the Q&A.
Strossen is embarrassing herself with that disingenuous take on events. But then, a lot of people have said embarrassing things about this incident, some of them insistently and repeatedly.
The way to deal with this kind of disruption is to arrest the disrupters, remove them for the room, and expel them from the law school. Problem solved.
The trouble with the Stanford protesters was that, unlike the Tennessee protesters, the Stanford protesters didn’t have a bullhorn 📢. You need a bullhorn to ensure everyone listens. If someone in the audience is hard of hearing, a bullhorn is a game changer.
After Cook Country State’s Attorney Anita Alverez was shouted down at an event at the Institute for Politics (David Axelrod’s roost), UChicago started the process that led to the Chicago Principles. Old-time William Brennan-type liberal Geof Stone led that committee. He said stating the principles was the easy part. Enforcing them was the hard part. That got turned over to another committee ( informally called the committee on bad behavior), which laid out specific protocols to be followed in the event of an attempted disruption, including specified lines of authority.
So, Althouse has a point for sure. Stanford was unprepared. They had principles but no plan to enforce them. Ad hoc authority rarely works well.
Steinbach was the wrong person to enforce free speech and open inquiry. She was supposed to hold the students’ little hands as they wept because the bad judge disagreed with them. For her, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. As to the New York Times, they are trumpeting their own confusion. When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
I thought Steinbach read her remarks from a printed-out sheet. If it was known that one administrator had prepared to speak, it would make sense that none of the others stepped up.
I would expect anyone employed by the school to be ready to defend the free-speech policy. I find it troubling that even the Federalist Society’s president thinks free speech is some kind of specialist issue best left to the experts. I wish I were more surprised that the ACLU makes such a weak showing.
This whole excerpt seems to be an admission that DEI is incompatible with academic freedom.
By the way, was it ten minutes of shouting? That is not what David Lat reported. He indicated it was pretty much the whole event, although disruption ebbed and flowed.
and it just somehow happened that Steinbach stepped up to the podium? Maybe, but I'm not so sure.
The protesting students certainly planned this protest. Steinbach seemed to have a prepared statement and to read from it. The word cahoots comes to mind. Was the whole thing theater? Maybe that's why the NYT article seems so mixed up. They're trying to help keep that cat in the bag.
Maybe not everything that would contribute to a learning experience needs to be spelled out in a “job description” because it may be assumed that if you work for an ivy legue university your judgment will be up to anything the students can throw at you.
I mean I would hope that’s the case, for the students paying parents and/or loan servitude students sake.
What a steaming pile of “pass the buck, it’s not my job man”. If “Diversity” means anything, it means diversity of thought and opinion - not just “my Crayola box has the right colors and shapes”. And for this DEI Dean, the crayons were obviously more important than any other issue. It stands to the person who supposedly has authority to step up and enforce the University policies in front of the mob - it’s not a popularity contest to rack up the most woke points by discussing juice squeezes.
The DEI Queen, as well as the 2 other Stanford officials in the room, massively failed at their most basic function - educating the students in the concept that there are real world effects of disregarding rules of order. Why will someone play by the rules toward you if you don’t think they apply toward anyone else? All 3 should be severely reprimanded and the “ soft photo” babe needs to be unceremoniously dumped. She didn’t do her job when it counted most.
And someone from the ACLU discussing any subject objectively. Really? That’s like using the SPLC to mark “ hate crimes”. Just more gaslit baloney.
The former head of the ACLU is concerned because the Yalies didn't show up to protest her? And praises Steinbach for her "courage" in moderating a panel at which she spoke--before the Duncan outrage?
What the hell? She's not even a TERF, let alone a Republican.
Hint, Nadine: You are not a target. Judge Duncan was a target. Judge Duncan got set up and attacked.
She would also have more credibility if she had defended the January 6 protesters. The only thing I can find is her participating at a January 6, 2022 WaPo "symposium" with Jonah Goldberg and Steven Hayes, in which she is quoted as defending "the emergency principle" as a basis for restriction of speech and/or punishment (hard to tell--I can't get past the paywall). (No "dissenting voices" on that panel. Democracy Dies in Darkness, you know).
Very weak sauce. Ms. Strosser and the ACLU should be loud, clear and strident in defense of those charged and imprisoned, and should have been from the beginning. Instead they have been MIA and collaborating with the likes of Goldberg and Hayes.
This is pure damage control.
Yah, like Stanford needs even more administrators to make certain the children play nice. /snort of disgust/. And more rules please. An extra helping.
To me this is the point: ."Ms. Strossen said she was struck that [a week later, when she appeared on a panel at Yale], there were no protesters of any kind. “I worry that maybe the reason that there weren’t even nondisruptive protests,” she said, “is students were too afraid that they would be subject to discipline or doxxing.” Or maybe they were there to actually listen? (or maybe they heard about judges not wanting to hire Yale law students as clerks?).
Well, yes. Students should learn to have the ability to grow beyond their childhood into adulthood. This is part of what happens in the college years. If you cannot learn to attend a talk and listen, but instead go there strictly to disrupt, what's the point of any of it? And what about those students who do go to hear another view? Are they not allowed that? What's the point of an elite university that cannot even teach, then demand such a standard out of it's students? Is 'demand' too harsh a thing to ask of students in elite universities today? It wasn't always thus. In fact, until the left made it an extra credit activity to become 'activists' we did not have people with hyphenated professions. Teacher/activist; painter/activist; lawyer/activist, etc. etc.
The universities groom this behavior, this insistence on ignorance, the act of shouting out rather than listening. They groom and nurture it by who they admit, how they teach, who and what they actively show support for. You get more of what you subsidize. Their fields have yielded a bumper crop of activists ready to shout down anything heterodox.
One other thing. The article infers that when no Stanford administrator stepped up to handle this, Steinbach stepped in to talk. Its made to sound like her speech wasn't written down, carefully scripted and ready to be used.
All valid points. Perhaps I am ignorant of the facts, but is this the first time this had happened at a prestigious law school?
"Courage" and "Extraordinary" aren't what they used to be.
Beans 1, Nuts 0?
I never would have spontaneously taken your opinion. When you first defended the DEI Dean, I “tried on” your opinion and was surprised at how well it held up over the next few days. I have tremendous respect for Strossen, as I do for you. I have a Stanford degree (not in law) and bu that exposure wonder if universities, having brought us the joys of DEI, will be among the first institutions forced to de- DEI as its contradictions and challenges mount. Whatever the ultimate response at Stanford, it does not feel like it is going to be “more DEI”. Let’s hope.
Recently MIT hosted a debate about whether DEI departments should be abolished at college and universities. The debate was held following traditional debate rules. Both sides respectfully allowed the other side to speak. The audience was given time to ask questions, and they did so. The panelists answered their questions. It was refreshing. The university had "uninvited" a known authority in the field of climate science for something he had said not related to the topic. Students had protested, and the proverbial shit hit the fan. Since then, the university has been working to teach their students what "free speech" really means. I'm not going to throw Stanford Law School into the trash heap just yet. I'm willing to wait to see what they do going forward. MIT has set the bar. This incident is a teachable moment. I want to see what they teach.
and it just somehow happened — "[r]egardless of what should have happened up to that point" — that Steinbach stepped up to the podium.
It "just somehow happened" that Steinbach had riled up the students on social media before the event, and had prepared remarks with her at the event.
“Law schools need to have plans and protocols in place for controversies like this,
They did, they just weren't enforced.
I'm disappointed with Strossen. She has made strong statements in the past supporting the rights of speakers and their audiences.
Well, I can certainly agree she was the wrong admiistrator. And that Stanford should hae been preparred. So, of course she should not be the only one blamed.
So, Stanford, what have you reviewed? Are there rules you'll follow for all speakers? WIll you tacke action against students for future activities? Have you announced that? Have you instructed all administrators that they are damn well reuired to enforce free speech? Any rules about treating conservative (or othe) groups, like listing names? How about the tratment of the dean by students after the fact?
Seems like Democracy dies in silence at Stanford.
And now a word about the DEI administrator (Yeah, I know you want her to not be the focus). Here I focus on:
“If she was the administrator whose job was to enforce the no-disruption policy, then yeah, she totally failed, but that’s not her job description,”
Not in her job description? WTF?
Was what she did in her job description? She publicaly criticized the invited guest siding with the hecklers. She expressed dismay that the school allowed for speech she disagreed with.
Perhaps she should post that job description that covers those issues.
Not to mention her appearance seems to me to be part of a setup.
Duncan was viciously treated because he was deemed to wear a Yellow Star. Because she's a lefty through-and-through and thinks only PC thoughts, she was therefore accepted by the bien pensant students as a guest speaker.
Oh yes. We can certainly expect that the Stanford social revolutionaries and their dupes will turn out to protest a "former head of the ACLU." A perfect litmus test. /S
“If she [Steinbach] was the administrator whose job was to enforce the no-disruption policy, then yeah, she totally failed, but that’s not her job description,” Mr. Rosenberger said.
-----
Like DEI personnel everywhere, the "job" is to act as a political officer, enforcing Newspeak. Akin to the political commissars attached to Soviet and Chinese institutions such as the military or schools. It's inherent in all totalitarian cults.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commissar
Re blacklists
The best known and the one everyone seems to talk about is the "Hollywood Blacklist". If we want to talk about blacklists, there are a couple things to bear in mind.
1. It had nothing whatsoever to do with McCarthy.
2. As with much of today's cancelation, it was private. Unlike cancelation, there was not even indirect govt involvement. The Blacklist was an initiative of the Hollywood Reporter magazine and its owner Billy Wilkerson
3. The reason for the Blacklist was monetary/revenge. Wilkerson had wanted to get into the movie business and was frozen out by the big studios. He created the blacklist to kneecap their top talent.
His son, then owner of the magazine, published an apology 60 years later
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/blacklist-billy-wilkersons-son-apologizes-391977/#!
See also
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/blacklist-thr-addresses-role-65-391931/
John Henry
Still ignoring Occam.
There was a plan.
To disrupt Judge Duncan's speech.
The only complication is papering over how blindingly obvious that was.
The problem is rooted in "diversity is inequity, exclusion (DIE)". It progressed with the opportunity created by the disruptive mob for a lecture to a captive audience.
Let's say there's a birthday party for children and a clown has been hired to entertain the kids. As it happens, a fire breaks out: Should the clown continue with the broad and sometimes frightening comedy, or should he, as an adult, lead the children to safety?
Steinbach chose to speak and chose what to say.She is responsible.She could have done nothing just like her feckless colleagues or she could habe done the right thing g.But she did not do that. She excused violence and closemindedness.
Is this the beginning of their attempts at rehabilitating steinbach?
“It [the school] can't hire a D.E.I. dean and then trust the free-speech policy to her and then push all blame onto her when the free-speech policy is inadequately enforced. It is the school as a whole, not Steinbach, that deserves the blame.“
Calling BS here. If the school trusts the free speech policy to this Dean, then it most certainly CAN push blame onto her when it’s inadequately enforced. Who else would they blame but the Dean to whom they trusted the policy?
"She’s a smart and good person who was just put in a really bad spot.”
Except that she is not smart. And, she's not a good person, she just thinks she's a good person. And the "bad spot" she's in is called Stanford Law School. Shithole.
It's leftists who disrupt speeches, and the speeches they disrupt are by anyone not far left. They're not going to disrupt some ACLU mouthpiece. They know how to play the optics game.
DEI is a radical racist movement, even if some of the people racist and radical enough to promote it are otherwise very nice to some people some of the time because that's in their bloody job description.
The only decent adults in this story are the Federalist Society students. They demonstrated the integrity and open-mindedness to invite and host someone, in Strossen, with many views vastly different from their own. Note too that they could not get any other campus group to co-sponsor the event -- because those groups are immature, close-minded, and anti-intellectual.
Unsurprisingly, Strossen, who was a deceptive front for the ACLU's abandonment of its purported mission, has now returned the Federalist Society's graciousness and professionalism with a dog whistle to the mob by talking about how long mobs should be permitted to shout down other Federalist Society guests.
Maybe it's OK to shout for ten minutes out of an hour and a half, but more might be too much, Strossen muses. That woman cannot open her mouth without lying: under the guise of supporting free speech, she is giving marching orders to continued suppression of conservative speech. It's not "complicated" at all. This has always been her shtick.
This is how the ACLU slid entirely out of the legitimate free speech movement: her deceptive two-decade "leadership," which turned the organization into a hot mess of identity politics, internal purges, and increased radicalism. At least the mask is finally off.
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Isaiah 5:20
The Stanford Law students were quiet, and respectfully listened to, a lefty extremist who spoke two weeks prior to Judge Duncan. I am utterly gobsmacked! It took me the better part of a half hour to absorb this information.
\sarc
Althouse continues to find it convenient to ignore the evidence that Dean Steinbach was an instigator of the verbal assault on Judge Duncan. If she was in a bad spot, it’s because she helped create that bad spot, then deliberately put herself there.
The Stanford Law students were quiet, and respectfully listened to, a lefty extremist who spoke two weeks prior to Judge Duncan. I am utterly gobsmacked! It took me the better part of a half hour to absorb this information.
\sarc
Althouse continues to find it convenient to ignore the evidence that Dean Steinbach was an instigator of the verbal assault on Judge Duncan. If she was in a bad spot, it’s because she helped create that bad spot, then deliberately put herself there.
10 minutes seems long. I thought the target was 2 minutes of hate per day. At least according to the manual.
"If you get the balance wrong, Ms. Strossen said, then you risk chilling speech on the other side...."
You mean like the DOJ treating protesting parents as domestic terrorists at school board meetings? Or J6 protestors treated as seditionists when escorted into a public building by the capital police, or swat team 6:00 am knocks on a parents door, or arresting a 70+ year old for a process crime at 6:00 am while their spouse is kicked out of the house wearing their bedclothes, or getting your TV show cancelled and your jobs dry up for a single tweet that the "other side" decides they don't like.
Something like that?
"Are 10 minutes of shouting out of an hour-and-a-half long event too much?"
Well, yes. The standard established back in 1984 was TWO minutes of hate.
The purpose of shouting is not speech. The purpose of shouting is preventing speech.
I just can’t get behind the “it wasn’t her job” part of this disingenuous argument.
If it was her job why the hell was she there in the first place with prepared bullet points?
And if she was there as an observer why was she standing at the front of the room ready to jump in?
The judge would, of course, believe that an administrator standing at the front of the room was there to address any issues that would arise.
I call this excuse making stupidity of the highest order.
I am an old timey liberal which makes me a rabid right winger fascist in todays rankings. I am a free speech absolutist who has been appalled for years as the right has eroded as authority has been ceded to the student body. We once were proud to support Nazis marching in Skokie now we can’t abide a contrary opinion and debate the idea of free speech as though we were determining the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin. Suddenly the definition of free speech is “it depends”. Bullshit. Dick Gregory saw this coming and titled one of his books Nigger to make the point. So not only is free speech gone for the living but for the dead. Ask Mark Twain. Ask Margaret Mitchell. As for disrupters at colleges I would identify and expel and let them explain their outrage to their parents. The D.E.I. officer should have absolutely nothing to say about free speech.
"The protesting students certainly planned this protest."
So the school — as a whole — needed to have planned how to respond. It had an official policy that was supposed to apply. So why was chaos allowed to go on and why was Steinbach the administrator left to deal with it. She was the appointed DEI person, and she did what she was hired to do, handle it using DEI principles. The school is responsible for that. Focusing on Steinbach is missing the point!
There's nothing wrong with students planning protests. They pursued their ends and they chose to be completely rude. They risked consequences for going against the stated principles in the written policy. But they guessed right and they suffered no consequences. And that -- the lack of consequences -- is on the school (and not on Steinbach, who, herself, got punished).
The written-down policy is not the real policy. The real policy is the one the school followed. It had notice and an opportunity to plan what to do before it happened. It had various people who might have done something while the chaos was going on. And it did what it did after the fact.
Yes, I used to hate it when authorities where I worked wanted to focus on "is there anything you could have done better?" Let me assure you this is worse when you work in mental health, because it is a legitimate therapy exercise when dealing with patients who are in impossible situations with their more-pathological relatives and have to figure out ways to deal with that! But to apply that to the standard population is to say "Even though you are demonstrably not at fault, I am going to treat this as if the situation was caused by you, because then I can claim to have addressed this problem by talking to you about it. My job will be to help you manage your feelings about this, not give you the satisfaction of actual support after being mistreated."
It is shameful, and my last few years before retirement I was progressively freer to call people out on it, eventually in public if they didn't get what that warning shot across their bow meant.
The ACLU jumped the shark years ago. They are another left wing pressure group. The days of defending Nazis in Skokie are long gone.
But, she was only following orders!
(Saying a DIE head shouldn't be expected to act as school authority over free speech violations really does come down to this. You're saying that it was her job to quash speech, so she balanced it all nicely.)
Is 'no disruptions' not neutrally cruel enough?
why is this discussion going on week after week?
Is there table [aka type keyboard] being pounded on?
Stanford has the same policy USF had for Riley Gaines: if the speech doesn't fit our agenda, it's ok to protest it, attack it, prevent it. The left doesn't have double standards. The left promotes violence and anarchy.
The dean of diversity prepped the disruptors and encouraged them to attend an event that had nothing to do with her field, to heckle the speaker and to disrupt the event. Then the dean, who had no business being there, intervened in order to read her prepared text insulting and disparaging the invited speaker. Then the dean quieted the mob that she had invited and incited. Praise be that queen dean!!11!!1!
There's nothing wrong with students planning protests.
I agree.
However, Dean Steinbach seems to have had a plan and a prepared speech.
If Dean Steinbach was involved with the students in planning and organizing the protest, then the students had tacit permission for violating the protest policy and it's appropriate that Steinbach was punished and not the students. I don't know if that's what happened, but I suspect it. And I suspect the school wants to protect their whole concept of having a DEI department by not publicly revealing this because it's a very bad look for DEI.
“ She was the appointed DEI person, and she did what she was hired to do, handle it using DEI principles.”
Definition according to Dictionary.com: diversity, equity, and inclusion: a conceptual framework that promotes the fair treatment and full participation of all people, especially in the workplace, including populations who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination because of their background, identity, disability, etc.
How does the “fair treatment and full participation of all people” describe the choosing of sides and lecturing the judge?
The only way to excuse Steinbach’s behavior (in my opinion) would be if she chose sides because she saw that the situation was headed toward physical confrontation and she felt that placating the mob was the only way to save the judge’s life. In which case she should have explained her actions to the judge afterward and then recommended that all those students who who were disrupting the event be expelled immediately.
Follow the rules. If you choose not to, expect consequences.
The DEI dean is not hired to, and is not trained to maintain an atmosphere of free speech and tolerance on campus? Really?
Diversity does not include thought, opinion and political perspective?
Equity does not include time and consideration given to all?
Inclusion does not mean promoting an inclusive environment where everyone feels welcome, comfortable and not threatened.
I guess D, E and I don't mean what I thought they meant.
"Ms. Strossen said, then you risk chilling speech on the other side...."
Yes, she cuts right to the heart of the problem...the chilling of left wing speech on campus is clearly the danger here.
Almost everyone attending Stanford Law School is over 21. That means that by any reasonable standard they are adults. Plus they supposedly are in a professional school studying to be professionals. Yet the people who run Stanford and many commenters have responded like they are dealing with fragile children who can’t be expected to act like responsible adults. Even law school deans are being treated like they are incapable of being held to adult standards.
Life can be hard and even cruel and unfair. This failure to prepare students for adulthood and to hold adults to adult standards is irresponsible. Too bad no one responsible for this slow motion train wreck will ever be held accountable.
So the dean behaved differently depending on who the speaker is?
That sounds like a flat out admission of culpability for a Federalist Society lawsuit against Stanford.
Steinbach's malice had been established.
“There's nothing wrong with students planning protests. They pursued their ends and they chose to be completely rude. They risked consequences for going against the stated principles in the written policy. But they guessed right and they suffered no consequences. “
I think the prepared speech of Steinbach indicates that the students were not the only ones planning the disruption, and Steinbach guessed wrong and may have consequences. But this noise will provide cover to excuse an adult university professional from being punished for a violation of policy that she was certainly obligated to be aware of. The law students are not considered adults and are not punished because they are juveniles.
The theory is “Stanford had no plan, or did not implement a plan to control disruption, so as a university Dean, I can act counter to policy and not try to help by implementing a plan on the spot. There should be someone else other than a Dean, that is out there supporting policy.” Well, enforcing policy is what Deans do for a living. How about the Dean just saying to the mob Ok you have communicated your points clearly, now it is time to listen to the other side, as you are being taught to do in law school. No need for a printed speech to downspeak to the judge.
"Are 10 minutes of shouting out of an hour-and-a-half-long event too much? That is a matter of judgment and degree."
No, it isn't
5 seconds of shouting is too much.
Your. right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins
Your right to speech ends when my schedule talk begins
I don't have the right to demand you listen to me. Which mens you are free to not attend my speech
But you do not have the right to demand that anyone else listen to you. So you have no right to hijack my speech for your ends.
Period. Dot. End of statement
You have absolutely no right to interfere with my scheduled speech
In any way, shape, or form
You can protest outside, so long as you do not obstruct anyone from getting in, and no one who wants to hear my speech is forced to hear your speech.
I have an absolutely free speech right not to listen to you, not to give a shit about you, about what you have to say, or about what you want
You have the same. Which means you have a right not to come to my speech
But that's the ONLY right you have with respect to my scheduled speech
If you're not willing to accept that, then we can forget the whole free speech thing, the whole rule of law things (there's no law without the US Constitution, and there's no US Constitutional protections of any sort for anyone, once you've ended MY protections)
So, we can just move to people shooting anyone who says anything they don't like
Or you can accept that we have the absolute right to say things you hate, and that other people have an absolute right to listen to us, and you have absolutely no right to interfere
Ann Althouse said...
"The protesting students certainly planned this protest."
So the school — as a whole — needed to have planned how to respond. It had an official policy that was supposed to apply. So why was chaos allowed to go on and why was Steinbach the administrator left to deal with it.
She wasn't "left to deal with it", she CHOSE to thrust heresloef on the situation, after helping to create it in the first place
It had an official policy that was supposed to apply
That policy applied to Dean Steinbach. That she chose to ignore the polices that bound her are the proper grounds for firing her.
Dean Steinbach had two valid options:
1: Do nothing
2: Follow school policy
She chose
3: Be a Nazi
That is not now, never has been, and never will be the acceptable response
When Steinbach was sitting next to multiple other administrators (I think I read there were four others in the room), why did she not ask one of them to get up to enforce the rules?
The fact that she didn’t do that, and instead had prepared remarks, indicates that she did in fact want to be the one who brought the protest under control, in her own way. In other words, it was obviously a setup. The only question is how many other administrators and faculty were in on it.
For the activists that staff many of the hyphen-American and hyphen-studies majors as well as certain other departments in the humanities, the approach to politics adopted after their ascendence to power following their time out-of-power in the mid-60's to late 70's is captured by the observation,
"The measure of a new democracy is not the freedom from corruption and coercion in the first election, but rather, that freedom in the subsequent elections." The radical Left was all for free speech and access to public forums when they were struggling for legitimacy and power in the Sixties and Seventies. Now that they have moved to positions of power, especially at universities and corporate HR departments, they have no interest in free speech (other than their own) and no interest in sharing power with groups that are not in the same intersectional circles.
What on earth does D.E.I. have to do with a law school speech by a sitting judge? Or any matter of free speech. So pitiful. So modern
Federalist Society claim basis and support for 10A
what is their opinion on all preceding A's
I see Althouse is still beating that dead horse. Free speech is gone. The public arena where speech used to be free, like Hyde Park Corner or any American college, is long gone. In small groups people can still discuss controversial topics but god help you if a leftist or tranny hears about it. Speaking publicly like Riley Gaines did is no longer allowed. She has courage but she needs bodyguards.
Eva Marie — +11.
It’s a real mystery why Ann can’t come to terms with how badly Steinbach contravened the basic concept of DIE. Well, except for the most basic reason: the DIE mission statement is a lie, and Steinbach services the lie.
“There's nothing wrong with students planning protests. They pursued their ends and they chose to be completely rude. They risked consequences for going against the stated principles in the written policy. But they guessed right and they suffered no consequences. “
So, in other words, if someone decides to start killing left wingers, so long as they dont' get caught it's perfectly fine?
It is morally wretched and evil to block other people from being able to speak. What they did was evil.
That they got away with it is no more of a justification for them doing it than getting away with murder is a justification for murder.
But if that's the world you want, you are going to get it
Just don't claim to be surprised when it comes your way
"The protesting students certainly planned this protest."
So the school — as a whole — needed to have planned how to respond.
Unfortunately, the school — as a whole, was/is on the same side as the protesting students.
"The protesting students certainly planned this protest."
So the school — as a whole — needed to have planned how to respond.
Unfortunately, the school as a whole, was/is on the same side as the protesting students.
This is a helpful exchange, but I still disagree with you. Consider this, which I think helps to focus the issues:
“If she was the administrator whose job was to enforce the no-disruption policy, then yeah, she totally failed, but that’s not her job description,” Mr. Rosenberger said. “People have called her stupid and incompetent. She’s a smart and good person who was just put in a really bad spot.”
I would contend that the as the Dean of "Diversity," this is fully within the Dean's job description. This group and this judge were bringing to Stanford Law a point-of-view that is completely outside of the norm at Stanford Law. It is a diverse viewpoint. Somehow in all of acedemia and the legacy media "diversity" has come to be a codeword for "only progressive views are represented," which is the antithesis of true diversity. Even Rosenberger adopts this viewpoint as he absolves her of blame.
I understand that Professor Althouse is also a product of the institutions which accept that the progressive viewpoint is the only true diverse viewpoint and this is why she doesn't think that Steinbach did anything wrong. In truth, Steinbach failed to defend diversity and instead became a leader of the mob.
Free Speech? Their 'speech' was an attempt to stop others' free speech. They attempted the 'hecklers veto'. How dare they now claim it was in the service of 'free speech'?
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