Higher education
March 15, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Megyn Kelly covered the disgrace of Stanford Law School on her Sirius XM/podcast show yesterday. She invited Tim Rosenberger to discuss the disgrace. Rosenberger is the president of Stanford Law School’s Federalist Society chapter and hosted Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan at the shoutdown. In the video of the segment below, Megyn Kelly mocks Stanford DEI Dean Tirien Steinbach. Rosenberger does a good job discussing the event. Kelly deserves some
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March 14, 2023 — Scott Johnson
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
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March 13, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan was shouted down at Stanford Law School event sponsored by the Federalist Society chapter. The disruption of Judge Duncan’s remarks was supported at the event by Associate Dean of DEI Tirien Steinbach. Steve posted the audio here. Judge Duncan commented bluntly on his close encounter of the inclusion kind in remarks I posted here. Now Ed Whelan reports that Stanford has issued an apology. Stanford’s
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March 11, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium covers the plight of free speech in higher education. He contacted Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan after he was made the object of the Two Minutes Hate at Stanford Law School with the support of one Tirien Steinbach, the law school’s associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion. As Steve Hayward noted in “Stanford University disgraces itself,” Judge Duncan was beyond inclusion. His inclusion
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February 24, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Washington Free Beacon reporter Alana Goodman appeared for a three-minute segment on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show this past Wednesday evening. Her appearance followed up on reporting that we noted two weeks ago in “China contributes.” The Free Beacon posted a summary of Goodman’s reporting along with video of the segment (below). This remains something like a deep secret: The University of Delaware has received $6,704,250 in donations from China
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December 20, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Perhaps you’ve seen the story on the Wall Street Journal editorial page today (or in some other outlet where it is booming this morning) about Stanford University’s “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative,” which reads like a parody of our idiotic woke university culture today. But no—Stanford employed a task force that worked for months to advocate that no one on campus use the word “American” because “This term often refers
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November 29, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Middle East Forum’s Gregg Roman sent out this message last night in advance of Giving Tuesday today. Whether or not you are considering giving to your alma mater today, the message is of interest. I am posting it below without its numerous links. Roman writes: Dear Friend: The Middle East Forum keeps a close watch on North American universities, seeking to end anti-Western, anti-Israel, and pro-Islamist biases. That keeps us
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November 23, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I feel obligated to note that President Biden has extended the “pause” on student loan repayments pending resolution of the administration’s petition to the Supreme Court for relief allowing implementation of its lawless loan forgiveness plan. The “pause” reminds me of the title of Arlo Guthrie’s “The Pause of Mr. Claus” and it’s certainly in the spirit of the song. We have learned the government’s multifarious uses of “emergency” the
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November 1, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The subject of what goes under the shibboleth of “affirmative action” is both close to my heart and one about which I have frequently written, usually drawing on Andrew Kull’s legal history The Color-Blind Constitution. Published by Harvard University Press in 1998, it remains a terrific book. If Kull updated it to take cases of the past 25 years into account, the update would vindicate his analysis. One cannot miss
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October 10, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Last month Anthony Gockowski reported for Alpha News on the oath to “promote a culture of anti-racism” taken by incoming University of Minnesota Medical School students at their white-coat ceremony on August 19: White coats, the students said, are themselves a “symbol of power, prestige, and dominance.” Therefore, students will “strive to reclaim their identity as a symbol of responsibility, humility, and loving kindness.” “We commit to uprooting the legacy
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October 6, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho has a modest proposal to resist the cancel culture of legal education. Commencing with next year’s incoming class at Yale Law School, he is adopting a Yale boycott. He declines to hire YLS graduates as law clerks. I drew on the text of his keynote speech to the Federalist Society Kentucky Chapters Conference to flesh it out here. Toward the end of his talk Judge
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October 3, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho gave the keynote address at the Federalist Society’s Sixth Annual Kentucky Chapters Conference last week. Judge Ho gave his talk the title “Agreeing to Disagree—Restoring America by Resisting Cancel Culture.” Nate Hochman obtained a copy of the text and broke its most newsworthy aspect in “Federal Judge Vows to Stop Hiring Law Clerks from Yale Law School.” We followed Hochman’s account in “Bravo, Judge Ho.”
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October 2, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Linda Brown was the young girl who gave her name to the four cases consolidated for consideration in Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court case that effectively invalidated the regime of public school segregation. She died in 2018 at the age of 75 or 76. Neil Genzlinger’s New York Times obituary recounted her story. Genzlinger dealt inadequately with the Brown case. “In its ruling,” he wrote, “the
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September 30, 2022 — Scott Johnson
President Biden’s student loan giveaway is blatantly illegal, but standing presents an obstacle to lawsuits challenging it. I noted the lawsuit filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of Frank Garrison earlier this week. The Indiana federal district court has already denied Garrison’s motion for preliminary relief in an order that casts doubt on Garrison’s theory of standing. Now six states with Republican governors and attorneys general have commenced
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September 30, 2022 — Scott Johnson
NRO’s Nate Hochman obtained a copy of Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho’s keynote address to the Kentucky Chapters Conference of the Federalist Society and reports on it in “Federal Judge Vows to Stop Hiring Law Clerks from Yale Law School.” Judge Ho’s address — “Agreeing to Disagree — Restoring America by Resisting Cancel Culture” — cited a number of high-profile examples of speakers being shouted down or otherwise censored at
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September 28, 2022 — Scott Johnson
President Biden’s “cancelation” of student loans in the aggregate amount of hundreds of billions of dollars is bad public policy in several dimensions. It lacks any respectable justification. It is also of dubious legality — although they have a theory. The theory is a farcical stretch. They couldn’t care less about the weakness of their pretense to legality. If the law doesn’t fit…what they really count on is the difficulty
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September 6, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Leftists in the academy get very defensive when you charge them with killing the liberal arts, but today the Washington Post provides fairly damning evidence that this proposition is true. The subhed to their story on the “most-regretted majors” of college graduates, drawn from a Federal Reserve study, is: “Almost half of humanities and arts majors regret their choice — and enrollment in those disciplines is shrinking rapidly.” Who dominates
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