Thread by @aaronsibarium

NEW: Yale Law administrators are doing damage control as faculty members slam the school's dishonesty—and as students continue to go after Colbert.

One YLS professor told the school: "Please correct the record—I would not want to have to do it for you." freebeacon.com/campus/convuls…

Today, YLS dean Heather Gerken promised an investigation into the controversy. YLS told the Free Beacon that this investigation would not result in any further action against Colbert. "As our statement last week made clear, this is protected speech," a YLS spokesperson said.

The law school's statement, released Oct. 13 in the wake of my Free Beacon story, denied that Colbert faced "any disciplinary investigation" or action over his email. That denial sparked fierce blowback from two YLS professors who lambasted the dishonesty of their own university.

One of those professors, corporate legal scholar Roberta Romano, threatened to "correct the record" if the law school didn't do so itself. The administration's actions toward Colbert, Romano wrote a university spokesperson, are "in direct and total conflict with what you stated."

Romano also noted that the school's diversity director had made "a sly threat" about the student's career.

"Please correct the record," she added. "I would not want to have to do it for you."

Another Yale Law professor, who asked to remain anonymous, said the initial statement was "appallingly disingenuous and full of falsehoods." The most egregious falsehood, the professor said, was YLS's claim that "no student is investigated or sanctioned for protected speech."

Here is that professor's full statement:

The outrage has bubbled over into other elite universities. Keith Whittington, a legal theorist at Princeton, said Yale Law's actions were "highly inappropriate and completely incompatible with maintaining a free speech culture in a law school."

"There is no question that such actions send a chilling message across the student body and convey clearly that the law school is a hostile environment for conservative students," Whittington told the Free Beacon.

Meanwhile, the complaints against Colbert have only intensified since we published our story. Between Oct. 17 and Oct. 18, several students sent law school-wide emails denouncing Colbert and the Federalist Society, which one student group characterized as "violent."

"The pooled legal knowledge of our membership cannot name every [Fedsoc] decision that has harmed our communities," Yale's Dred Scott Society wrote in a 2,555-word email on Oct. 18—"a testament to the extensiveness of this violence."

Read it here: scribd.com/document/53353…

Colbert's actions, the society continued, "are yet another example of the way Fedsoc members attempt to weaponize discourse against the very people trying to have conversations in community with him"—conversations that were only initiated after the student complaints were filed.

"Trent's narrative of being a victim of cancel culture based on his membership in Fedsoc attempts to both diminish the harm that he caused and erase the role that his own actions played in causing the harm in the first place," the Dred Scott society statement goes on.

The president of Black Law Students association, Marina Edwards, likewise rejected the idea that Colbert had been "cancelled."

"Black students did not attempt to cancel Trent," she wrote in an Oct. 17 email to the law school, which you can read here: scribd.com/document/53353…

"Calling out someone who behaves irresponsibly toward historically marginalized communities...is not an act of oppression; it is an act of love and compassion for those whose lives are daily ripped apart and trampled upon by systems (and people) of oppression."

If students are not attempting to cancel Colbert, they are attempting to remove him from his position as a student representative. The law school's student government said in an Oct. 16 email that it drafted an entirely new set of procedures for removing student representatives.

Those procedures were drafted in direct response to "concerns surrounding Trent Colbert's conduct."

It remains unclear whether the student government will actually use those procedures against Colbert.

Another student group, the First Generation Professionals at Yale Law School, sent an email on Oct. 18 to "affirm" Edwards's message and "condemn the racist email sent by Trent Colbert."

The group said it "recognized[d]" the "harmful impacts" of "hostile media coverage" on black students and thanked Eldik for attempting to "educate Trent and repair harm within the [Yale Law School] community." Read it all here: scribd.com/document/53353…

The emails from Edwards and the Dred Scott Society also invoked the concept of "dialogue" pioneered by Paulo Freire, a Brazilian Marxist who praised Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution as "the most genial solution" to "oppressive" pedagogy.

"Critical dialogue is about holding space for positive growth and change," Edwards wrote, citing "Freirian praxis."

But, the Dred Scott Society clarified, "to engage in dialogue, we must all hold all of the cards."