Hundreds of rattled student activists reportedly filled the hallways at Stanford University to shame Jenny Martinez, the law school’s dean who apologized to the Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan after he was shouted down during a law school event last week.
Martinez showed up to the constitutional law class that she teaches only to find that her whiteboard had been saturated with flyers, attacking Duncan and coming to the defense of those who prevented him from speaking last week, according to the Free Beacon.
The flyers suggested that those who were shouting and disrupting Duncan’s talk were having their rights trampled on, and that they had a First Amendment right to condemn the speaker.
“We, the students in your constitutional law class, are sorry for exercising our 1st Amendment rights,” some flyers said.
After Martinez’s class concluded on Monday, there were reportedly protesters wearing face masks that read “counter-speech is free speech,” though Martinez conceded that the behavior toward Duncan last week was in clear violation of the school commitment to free speech.
It is unclear if the protesters believe there to be a distinction between counter-speech and intimidation, as there does not appear to be a difference in their behavior toward those with whom they do not see eye to eye.
It was reported that 50 of the 60 total students enrolled in the first-year course participated in the protest. According to student reports, nearly a third of the entire law school was actively protesting Martinez on Monday.
Luke Schumacher, a first-year law student in Martinez’s class said that the protesters “gave us weird looks if we didn’t wear black” and join the mob, adding that it did not “feel like the inclusive, belonging atmosphere that the DEI office claims to be creating.”
Another student claimed that the whole experience was a surreal one, noting that it “was eerie,” and that “the protesters were silent, staring from behind their masks at everyone who chose not to protest, including the dean.”
The Free Beacon noted that the same student ironically added that “this form of protest would have been completely fine” at Duncan’s talk on Thursday.
