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David Frum Profile picture
@davidfrum
Jun 16 • 19 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
Lincoln Alexander Law School is Canada's newest. It opened its doors to its first students in September 2020. To distinguish itself from more established competitors, it early identified progressive activism as its reason for being. . (Thread)lsac.org/choosing-law-s…
An institutional commitment to progressive activism may have seemed a good idea in 2020. Three years later, it resulted in almost half the full-time student body signing an open letter endorsing and defending the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel. thestar.com/news/investiga…
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The letter was dated October 20, 2023, seven days before Israeli ground troops entered Gaza. It was not a reaction to Israel's retaliation, which had barely begun. It was an immediate endorsement of Hamas terrorism and sexual violence. thestar.com/news/investiga…
The signed endorsement of Hamas terrorism by 70 of 150 full-time students had repercussions for the law school, including cancelations of job interviews by Toronto law firms and the provincial government. These were hard blows for a school that had only just opened its doors.
The law school's parent university responded to the uproar by inviting a former chief justice of the Nova Scotia supreme court to investigate whether the letter endorsing Hamas terrorism violated any university rules. torontomu.ca/news-events/ne…
In May 2024, the jurist delivered his report. It took 204 pages to reach the conclusion: No, the letter did not violate any university rules. torontomu.ca/content/dam/re…
The jurist's conclusion, "no university rules were broken," did not satisfy anybody. The students and faculty who signed the October 20 letter endorsing Hamas terrorism were never in danger of being punished by the law school! They were / are in danger of being unemployable.
Today, @globeandmail published a fascinating lengthy report by @robyndoolittle about the aftermath of the Lincoln Alexander public letter endorsing the Hamas terror attacks. theglobeandmail.com/business/artic…
@globeandmail @robyndoolittle The most fascinating observation in the @robyndoolittle report is that many (most?) of the students who signed the October 20 letter endorsing the Hamas terror attacks were not hardened ideologues. They were just ... careless. theglobeandmail.com/business/artic…
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@globeandmail @robyndoolittle For a future lawyer, the excuse, "I didn't read the document before I signed it" is not exactly reassuring.

"Attorneys who sign things without reading them are just what our clients are looking for!" said no law firm ever.
If you are a person who does not read carefully, think clearly, or write precisely, then the law is not the right career for you. The sooner you are rescued from it, the better - certainly for your potential clients, possibly for you as well.
As a matter of free speech, of course the students had a right to sign the Lincoln Alexander October 20 letter. Free societies properly police and punish "material support" for foreign terrorist organizations. But words alone? Should be fully legal.
But other people also have their own full range of rights, including the right not to hire people who have signed their names to letters endorsing mass murder and mass rape. And if you are surprised to discover that other people exist - again, the law may not be right for you.
As law firms cancel their interviews with Lincoln Alexander graduates, some students reply they never wanted to work for Big Law anyway. They wanted to work for the government, or government-funded non-profits. But that raises a big issue ...
In free and democratic Canada, citizens have the right to express an opinion that Hamas was justified in murdering, kidnapping, and raping Israelis.

But Canadian governments have an urgent national security interest not to hire or fund persons who endorse such crimes.
It's a story of a few dozen morally careless people at one struggling law school. But it has lessons for us all. END.
I'll add a personal PS here. I've written many millions of words in my life, some of which caused controversy. Some of those words I later regretted and rethought. In those cases, I've tried to explain the reasons for my change of mind. cnn.com/2011/OPINION/0…
As a general matter, I'm a big believer in second and third chances for those who want and seek them.
But if you have reconsidered, you should say so. END.

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More from @davidfrum

David Frum Profile picture
Jun 6
If Americans had chosen free trade and collective security in 1924, their sons would not have had to storm the beaches of Normandy in 1944. "America First" is the path to isolation, depression, and war.
Germany was a democracy in 1924. To survive, that democracy needed to export to pay for food and fuel and service its war debts. When the United States imposed heavy tariffs under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, it doomed German democracy - and Japan's too.
US Secretary of State Cordell Hull in 1942: jewishvirtuallibrary.org/address-by-sec…
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Read 4 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
Jun 5
This brilliantly revisionist book published in 2017 will transform your thinking about the Canadian role in D-Day. kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700625246/
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The story as most of us know it: Canadians landed on the most easterly of the D-Day beaches, made the deepest inland penetration on Day 1, cut a crucial road ... but then stalled. That anticlimatic story, argues "Stopping the Panzers," completely misconceives the Canadian role.
The Canadian division that landed at Juno Beach was the heaviest of any of the Allied units in tanks and guns. Its job was not to penetrate, but to thwart the only thing that could have defeated D-Day: a successful German counter-attack by the 550 tanks east of the D-Day zone.
Read 4 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
Jun 3
If you believe in the lab-leak theory of COVID - and are angry that the US government did not act on it - a reminder that every relevant decision here was Donald Trump's to make, not Dr Fauci's.
If you believe that the US government covered up a Chinese biological threat for political reasons, your beef is with the person who headed the government when the alleged cover-up decision was supposedly made. That would be President Donald Trump.
Pandemic. Economic collapse. Riots and crime. Donald Trump posted the worst fourth year record of any US president since Herbert Hoover in 1932, or maybe James Buchanan in 1860. Just about all MAGA talk is a massive exercise in evading or covering up, "who was president in 2020?"
Read 13 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
Jun 1
Here's why and how the Trump conviction helps the Biden re-election (and why and how it doesn't). A thread.
1) Biden heads a big, messy coalition. To win re-election, he has to herd a lot of cats. Two sets of cats are especially prone to stray. We hear a lot about the first set: younger, poorer, less connected to the political process.
2) The younger, the poorer, the less politically connected feel the pain of price increases. They don't share in the booming Biden stock market. They may get their information from social media, with a bias to negativity. They may feel little affinity for a man born before D-Day
Read 13 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
May 9
Biden making the same error w/r/t Israel that he previously made with Ukraine: trying to micro-manage from a distance somebody else's defensive war by limiting categories of weapons. This error doesn't limit war. This error prolongs war, by denying the ally the means of success.
I often think the Biden foreign policy would produce more success if its architects were less clever. "Give the Ukrainians/Israelis enough that they don't lose, but not enough to win" is an idea to baffle all lesser minds.
The micro-management of Israel's war is one part of a much bigger scheme: an Arab force to police Gaza, reform of the Palestinian Authority, a Saudi-US defense agreement, etc. etc.

Less clever people would have arrived at a simpler plan: fight Hamas until it's beaten.
Read 4 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
Apr 25
Every dictator who ever seized power justified his coup as an official act for the good of the state.
Between November 2020 and January 2021, Donald Trump attempted a coup d'etat. Fortunately, power is harder to seize in the United States than in other countries. Fortunately too the outcome of the 2020 election was too clear to be subverted. Fortunately also ...
Fortunately also Trump's coup was countered by constitutionally loyal Republicans like his own vice president. Fortunately finally, the would-be coup-makers were unusually stupid, crazy, lazy, and inept. But still - Trump as president attempted a coup d'etat.
Read 4 tweets

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