Students at Stanford University have now demanded that a woke inclusivity dean be axed for condemning a conservative judge at a recent law school event.
The students took action by writing an opinion piece in their newspaper, suggesting that Tirien Steinbach should not be a Stanford dean, going on to say that the university should expel “anti-speech zealots,” according to the Daily Mail.
The conservative circuit judge in question is Trump-appointed Kyle Duncan, who was invited to speak at the Stanford Law’s Federalist Society last week. However, the event was soon reduced to a smear campaign against Duncan, with the DEI dean going on a six-minute tirade about same-sex marriage, trans rights, and reproductive rights.
Those who wanted to hear Duncan speak during the event were quickly outshouted by those who could not stand to even be in the presence of someone they did not wholly agree with. Instead of accepting Duncan’s invitation as an educational tool for law students, Steinbach and the woke mob appear to have interpreted Duncan’s visit as a political campaign, where they felt the need to shut him down.
Consequently, some of the students reportedly gathered together, writing in the school’s newspaper: “If Stanford cares about free speech, it must fire any administrator who actively encourages these unruly actions against it.”
The apparent apology by law school dean Jenny Martinez did not chastise Steinbach for her obnoxious behavior, even though there is video evidence that she was taking part in the heckling toward Duncan.
The several students who penned the opinion piece in The Stanford Review branded Steinbach as the most recent case of anti-speech zealotry that has ravaged colleges and universities across the country.
The piece entitled “Fire Tirien Steinbach” was written by Thomas Adamo, Josiah Joner, and Walker Stewart, all of whom suggested that it was not their fellow students who were the problem but the “Stanford Law School’s own Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”
The students kicked off the piece by noting that the students were not at the center of the chaos, but that it was Steinbach.
“Dean Steinbach took the podium with a notebook and prepared remarks, ready to slam Duncan as well,” the students wrote, noting that Steinbach even encouraged students to go against the school’s free speech policy.
The students criticized the apparent apology that was made, suggesting that such a gesture is “meaningless” unless “concrete actions are taken to rid the administration of anti-speech zealots.”
Though it is reportedly unclear how the school intends to prevent such a situation from happening again, the students wrote that “[f]iring Dean Steinbach is a good start.”
The students noted that Steinbach’s actions have damaged the reputation of Stanford’s law program, concluding: “If these students are to be trained for bench and bar, it certainly should be with a deep respect for the bedrock principle of free speech.”
Martinez made a public apology to Duncan on behalf of the school, writing that “staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so” during the event, and “instead intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.”
“We write to apologize for the disruption of your recent speech at Stanford Law School,” the statement read, though it failed to name Steinbach by name. “As has already been communicated to our community, what happened was inconsistent with our policies on free speech.”
“We are very sorry about the experience you had while visiting our campus.”
However, the apology made by Martinez functions as little more than a formality, with no real consequences for those involved in the suppression of free speech.
Though Duncan has since accepted the university’s apology, he noted in an interview with Rod Dreher that Stanford “is one of the best law schools in the world. The students are the cream of the crop. The future judges, senators, presidents, leaders of industry.”
“And yet here is a mob of the best and brightest, shouting down a federal judge who’s been invited to campus, and thereby demonstrating that they don’t have the foggiest grasp of the basic concept of legal discourse: you have to meet reason with reason. Instead, their operating principle is: If I don’t like what you say or think, I will silence you.”
“Unless those students undergo a radical change in their whole approach to argument and disagreement, they are unfit to be members of any bar.”
He noted that he sympathized with the students who attended, but who missed out on the opportunity.
“The attack was intimately personal and, frankly, disgusting. If I talked to a dog the way those students talked to me, I’d feel ashamed.”
Duncan went on to say that the whole “sorry episode” was like the “therapy session from hell.”
