By BARBARA SIMPSON
Despite the problems in our economy today, with prices going through the roof and taxes doing the same, families with college-age children still want them to get that advanced degree. Many want them to go to an Ivy League school.
Prestige, and all that.
If they do go there, they’ll pay through the nose for the privilege. Considering tuition and fees, board and meals, books and fees the annual Yale total is over $84,000 a year. But what will parents and students get for their money?
If what recently happened at Yale University is any indication, they should get a refund.
It was a scheduled event at Yale Law School. It was a March 10 free speech panel on campus, hosted by the Yale Federalist Society.
That sounds good, but it turned into chaos.
The panelists were Monica Miller from the progressive American Humanist Association and Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative nonprofit promoting religious liberty.
According to The Washington Free Beacon, those opposing groups took the same side in a Supreme Court case last year on legal remedies for First Amendment violations.
The Federalist Society said that Yale event was intended to show that a liberal atheist and a conservative Christian could find common ground on free speech issues.
It didn’t work out that way, because of the audience.
The program began with Law School Professor Kate Stith introducing Kristen Waggoner. Rather, it began with her trying to do the introduction because at that moment, some 120 protesters stood and held up signs attacking the Alliance Defending Freedom and shouting down the speaker.
The Free Beacon noted that the group has successfully argued several Supreme Court cases on religious exemptions from civil rights laws that violate freedom of conscience. So they have a good record.
One notable case is the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission in 2018.
The protesters continued with their disruptions, including jeering at the Federalist Society. They shouted and called names to both sides.
The Free Beacon has audio and video of the scene and reported that one protester shouted at a member of the conservative groups that she would “literally fight you, b****.”
The professor tried to quiet the mob, reminding them of the free speech policies of Yale, which bar any protest that “interferes with speakers’ ability to be heard and of community members to listen.”
They didn’t care what she said and, as video shows, heckled her further with their middle fingers raised. She told them to “grow up” and said that if they continued, she said, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave, or help you leave.”
They did leave the room, but congregated in the hall outside, chanting “protect trans kids,” and “shame, shame,” screaming, stomping, slapping, singing, pounding the walls and floor.
They screamed that what they were doing “is” free speech!
Their ruckus disrupted nearby classes, exams, and meetings. The protesters also blocked the only exit from the event, and two members of the Federalist Society said they were grabbed and jostled as they attempted to leave.
The newspaper reported that the associate dean of the Law School, Ellen Cosgrove, was present the entire time and she did not confront any of the protesters, even though the ruckus clearly violated the Yale free speech policies.
In other words, the protesters got away with it!
Waggoner was quoted as saying, “It was disturbing to witness law students whipped into a mindless frenzy. I did not feel it was safe to get out of the room without security.”
In fact, police did arrive on the scene to escort the speakers from the building safely.
In the days after the chaos at the event, more than 60 percent of the student body of the law school signed an open letter supporting the “peaceful student protesters” who, they claimed, had been imperiled by the presence of the police!
The letter went on to claim “police violence in this country against Black LGBTQ people, especially Black trans people is a real danger.”
It continued, “Even with all of the privilege afforded to us at YLS, the decision to allow police officers in as a response to the protest put YLS’s queer student body at risk of harm.”
It’s interesting that the complaint morphed from disagreeing about free speech and conservatives to a defense of sexual choices.
But there is a positive response to this situation. Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman was (is) not happy with the Yale chaos and, according to Reuters, sent a message to federal judges nationwide.
David Lat, a lawyer and legal journalist, said Silberman’s e-mail referenced the shout-down situation and suggested that “students who are identified as those willing to disrupt any such panel discussion should be noted. All federal judges — and all federal judges are presumably committed to free speech — should carefully consider whether any student so identified should be disqualified from potential clerkships.”
Whew! Take names and remember them! He sounds as though he means business with that threat and personally, I would hope that judges would take note and do as he suggested. To deny clerkships to young lawyers would truly circumvent their professional aspirations.
Judge Silberman has the credentials to back his position. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he served as U.S. deputy attorney general from 1974-1975, and was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit in 1985, by President Ronald Reagan.
The biggest problem, as I see it, is that the judge is considered a “conservative” and clearly, those at Yale supporting the protesters are not. They would ignore Judge Silberman’s suggestion.
But remember this. The reality of this situation is that those Yale law students will someday graduate and go into the practice of law. You might find yourself hiring one of them. You might find yourself in court facing one of them in the opposite to your case. You might be facing one of them who ends up being a judge.
Do you think persons like that will be fair in their actions and decisions? I don’t and I think they will poison the whole legal system, if they haven’t already done so.
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