The revolution continues at Stanford Law School. The students would prefer not to let the mealymouth administration get away with its public relations treatment of the shoutdown of Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan. Aaron Sibarium reports at the Free Beacon:
Hundreds of Stanford student activists on Monday lined the hallways to protest the law school’s dean, Jenny Martinez, for apologizing to Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan, whom the activists shouted down last week.
The embattled dean arrived to the classroom where she teaches constitutional law to find a whiteboard covered inch to inch in fliers attacking Duncan and defending those who disrupted him, according to photos of the room and multiple eyewitness accounts. The fliers parroted the argument, made by student activists, that the heckler’s veto is a form of free speech.
“We, the students in your constitutional law class, are sorry for exercising our 1st Amendment rights,” some fliers read.
The vast majority of Dean Martinez’s con law students joined the protest against her. They deserve suspension, expulsion, or a failing grade in con law, although I seriously doubt that Dean Martinez sees it that way.
However, the student may deserve high marks for drama. We appear to be entering Abu Ghraib territory in protest theater:
When Martinez’s class adjourned on Monday, the protesters, dressed in black and wearing face masks that read “counter-speech is free speech,” stared silently at Martinez as she exited her first-year constitutional law class at 11:00 a.m., according to five students who witnessed the episode. The student protesters, who formed a human corridor from Martinez’s classroom to the building’s exit, comprised nearly a third of the law school, the students told the Washington Free Beacon.
The majority of Martinez’s class—approximately 50 students out of the 60 enrolled—participated in the protest themselves, two students in the class said. The few who didn’t join the protesters received the same stare down as their professor as they hurried through the makeshift walk of shame.
“They gave us weird looks if we didn’t wear black” and join the crowd, said Luke Schumacher, a first-year law student in Martinez’s class who declined to participate in the protest. “It didn’t feel like the inclusive, belonging atmosphere that the DEI office claims to be creating.”
Another student in the class, who likewise declined to protest, said the spectacle was a surreal experience. “It was eerie,” said the student, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. “The protesters were silent, staring from behind their masks at everyone who chose not to protest, including the dean.”
Ironically, the student added, “this form of protest would have been completely fine” at Duncan’s talk on Thursday.
The student chapter of the old Communist front National Lawyers Guild remains in the fray. The revolution will not be televised. It may not even be covered beyond the Free Beacon.
As always, it is good to confirm: “Martinez did not respond to a request for comment.”
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