My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School
Stuart Kyle Duncan, a federal judge serving on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, provides a firsthand account of his “struggle session” with Stanford Law School students. “The most disturbing aspect of this shameful debacle is what it says about the state of legal education. Stanford is an elite law school. The protesters showed not the foggiest grasp of the basic concepts of legal discourse: That one must meet reason with reason, not power. That jeering contempt is the opposite of persuasion. That the law protects the speaker from the mob, not the mob from the speaker. Worst of all, Ms. Steinbach’s [Associate Dean for DEI] remarks made clear she is proud that Stanford students are being taught this is the way law should be.”
Judge Duncan was invited by the Federalist Society to give a talk at Stanford Law School. The school assured Duncan that they were “on top of it” when he got word there might be protesters. Instead of being on top of it, administrators were passive bystanders to a Red Guard-style public shaming of Duncan. The DEI administrator even participated, taking the microphone, pulling out a pre-prepared speech, and using it as an opportunity to question whether free speech is worth it, repeatedly asking, “is the juice worth the squeeze?”
Clarifying further, she said, “I understand why people feel like the harm is so great that we might need to reconsider those policies, and luckily, they’re in a school where they can learn the advocacy skills to advocate for those changes.”
Pause to think on that and ask: Reconsider and change exactly which policies?
“The protesters weren’t upset by the subject of my talk,” explains Duncan, “a rather dry discourse on how circuit courts interact with the Supreme Court in times of doctrinal flux. Rather, I was their target. While in practice, I represented clients and advanced arguments the protesters hate.”
For the incredulous, Duncan invites everyone inside today’s academia. “This is on video, and the entire event is on audio, in case you’re wondering.”
Related:
Latest Updates:
Stanford Law’s Diversity Dean Is ‘on Leave’ as Controversy Boils Over a Disrupted Speech (Chronicle, 3/22/23)
Dean Stanford Law Statement (Stanford, 3/22/23)
Stanford Law Disruptions Were Orchestrated by the National Lawyers Guild (with Addendum) (Alan Dershowitz Substack, 3/23/23)
The Tyranny of the DEI Bureaucracy (WSJ, 3/17/23)
How to stop law students from blocking free speech (by Charles Lipson AM 74 PHD 76, Spectator, 3/16/23)
College administrators cannot promote their own politics (by Samuel Abrams AM 07 PHD 10, Washington Examiner, 3/16/23)
Stanford Law radicals want more censorship (The Dershow, 3/15/23)
Steinbach’s Premeditated Shutdown: New Revelations About SLS Event Show Collusion (Stanford Review, 3/15/23)
Student Activists Target Stanford Law School Dean in Revolt Over Her Apology (Free Beacon, 3/14/23)
Should the Names of Stanford Student Disrupters Be Published? (Dershowitz substack, 3/13/23)
Stanford Apology (Stanford President and Stanford Law Dean, 3/10/23)
Fifth circuit judge Kyle Duncan is calling on Stanford to axe DEI dean Tirien Steinbach (Free Beacon, 3/10/23)
