Aaron Sibarium Profile picture
Mar 14, 2023 17 tweets 3 min read Read on X
NEW: Hundreds of Stanford students lined the halls yesterday to protest the law school’s dean, Jenny Martinez, for apologizing to Kyle Duncan, the judge shouted down last week.

The students effectively subjected Martinez to an intimidating walk of shame.🧵freebeacon.com/campus/student…
Martinez arrived to the classroom where she teaches constitutional law to find a whiteboard covered in fliers attacking Duncan and defending those who disrupted him. The fliers parroted the argument, made by student activists, that the heckler’s veto is a form of free speech. ImageImage
"We, the students in your constitutional law class, are sorry for exercising our 1st Amendment rights," some fliers read. As a private law school, Stanford is not bound by the First Amendment.
When Martinez’s class adjourned, the protesters, dressed in black and wearing face masks that read "counter-speech is free speech," stared silently at Martinez as she exited the room, according to five students who witnessed the episode.
The student protesters, who formed a human corridor from Martinez’s classroom to the building’s exit, comprised nearly a third of the law school. And the majority of Martinez’s class—approximately 50 students out of the 60 enrolled—participated in the protest themselves.
The few who didn’t join the protesters received the same stare down as their professor as they hurried through the makeshift walk of shame.

"They gave us weird looks if we didn’t wear black" and join the crowd, said Luke Schumacher, a first-year law student in Martinez’s class.
"It didn’t feel like the inclusive, belonging atmosphere that the DEI office claims to be creating."

Another student in the class, who likewise declined to protest, said the spectacle was a surreal experience.
"It was eerie," the student said. "The protesters were silent, staring from behind their masks at everyone who chose not to protest, including the dean." 

Ironically, the student added, "this form of protest would have been completely fine" at Duncan’s talk on Thursday.
This protest was even larger than the one that disrupted Duncan’s talk, and came on the heels of statements from at least three student groups rebuking Martinez’s apology.
The Stanford National Lawyers Guild said Saturday that Martinez had thrown "capable and compassionate administrators" under the bus. Stanford’s immigration law group issued a similar declaration Sunday, writing that Martinez’s apology to Duncan "only made this situation worse."
And Stanford Law School’s chapter of the American Constitution Society expressed outrage that Martinez and Tessier-Lavigne had framed Duncan "as a victim, when in fact he himself had made civil dialogue impossible."
The groups argued that the students who disrupted Duncan, in violation of Stanford’s free speech policies, were merely exercising their own free speech rights. That idea appears to be shared by Tirien Steinbach, the diversity dean who harangued Duncan.
In a conversation with students after the event, Steinbach claimed the hecklers hadn’t violated any law school policies, according to two people who witnessed the conversation.
She also alleged that Duncan hadn’t prepared a speech—a claim contradicted by video of the judge holding pages of pre-written remarks—and that he was a serial provocateur, belittling law students everywhere he's spoken in order to rile them up for the cameras.
Steinbach, who did not respond to a request for comment, laid the blame for the chaos entirely at Duncan’s feet, the people who witnessed the conversation said.
Martinez said at the start of her class that she had received a number of emails complaining about her apology to Duncan—which was co-signed by the president of Stanford—but told students they would not be litigating that dispute during Monday’s class.
After Martinez left the building, Schumacher said, the protesters began to cheer, cry, and hug. "We are creating a hostile environment at this law school," Schumacher said—"hostile for anyone who thinks an Article III judge should be able to speak without heckling."

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More from @aaronsibarium

May 8
NEW: UCLA medical school was sued today for discriminating against whites and Asians in admissions.

The lawsuit is based on my reporting from last year. It was filed by Students for Fair Admissions—the same group that got affirmative action outlawed nationwide.🧵
SFFA scored a landmark victory against Harvard University in 2023 when the Supreme Court ruled that racial preferences were unconstitutional. Now the group’s president, Edward Blum, is framing the UCLA lawsuit as a sequel to the Harvard case.
"This lawsuit sends an important message to every institution of higher education: Any school and administrator that uses race and racial proxies in admissions in defiance of the Supreme Court's ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard will be sued," Blum said.
Read 11 tweets
May 6
NEW: In March, the Trump administration said it would investigate whether UCLA medical school's admissions office discriminates based on race.

Two weeks later, the med school promised to do just that, telling students in writing that it would pick "BIPOC" admissions officers.🧵 Image
On April 8, the school circulated a memo that outlined "guiding principles for student representation on the admissions committee," which includes 3rd and 4th year students. Those guidelines require the committee to consider race when picking student admissions officers.
"The Chairs of the [admissions committee] will review all submitted recommendations to ensure representation from those who identify as BIPOC and LGBTQ+," the memo reads, according to a screenshot obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Image
Read 14 tweets
May 2
NEW: The Trump administration said Monday it would investigate the Harvard Law Review for race discrimination.

72 hours later, the journal asked applicants to disclose their race in their personal statements, so that it could select editors from "diverse … backgrounds."🧵 Image
The journal sent an email to all first-year law students that included a memo that encouraged applicants to "convey aspects of their identity," including their race, through an optional "holistic review" statement. Image
"This statement may identify and describe aspects of your identity not fully captured by the categories on the previous page," the essay prompt reads. Image
Read 20 tweets
May 1
NEW: As the Trump administration investigates the Harvard Law Review over the journal’s race-based policies, the law review itself will be conducting its own investigation—not into the documents showing patent discrimination, but into who leaked those documents to yours truly.🧵 Image
The journal’s top editors asked members of the law review last week to come forward with any information that might help identify the leaker, writing, "The information contained in the article should not have been shared." Image
"We are looking into the matter," the editors said Friday in an email. "Our inboxes and offices are open to anyone with information about these recent events. We will update you with developments." Image
Read 13 tweets
Apr 28
EXCLUSIVE: The Trump administration just launched multiple probes of Harvard University and the Harvard Law Review, citing allegations that the flagship law journal discriminates based on race.

The Education Department and HHS will each conduct separate investigations.🧵 Image
The probes come after the Free Beacon published extensive evidence of race discrimination at the nation’s top law review, both in the selection of articles and editors.

The probes—to be conducted by each agency’s office for civil rights—come days after former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell vowed to sue Harvard over the journal’s policies, which include evaluating articles based on the racial diversity of their citations.
Read 8 tweets
Apr 25
NEW: The Harvard Law Review has made DEI the "first priority" of its admissions process. It routinely kills or advances pieces based on the author's race. It even vets articles for racially diverse citations.

And guess what? Editors at the top journal put all this in writing.🧵 Image
Image
Image
We obtained more than four years of documents from the law review, including article evaluations, training materials, and data on the race and gender of journal authors. They reveal a pattern of pervasive race discrimination that could plunge Harvard into even deeper crisis.
Just over half of journal editors are admitted solely based on academic performance. The rest are chosen by a "holistic review committee" that has made the inclusion of "underrepresented groups"—defined to include race—its "first priority," per a resolution passed in 2021. Image
Read 40 tweets

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