In what may constitute the most tone deaf response to an academic scandal in history, Stanford University is advising conservative students involved with the recently cancelled Federalist Society event that they can “reach out” to various resources, including DEI Dean Tirien Steinbach who helped shutdown the event. It is akin to the Oscars telling Chris Rock that Will Smith is available as an emotional support coach. You know what is emotionally therapeutic for those denied free speech? Free speech.
Federalist Society leaders received an email (that went to all students) from acting Dean of Students Jeanne Merino to stress that traumatized students could seek “safety and mental health” support resources from various individuals, including Dean Steinbach.
As previously discussed, Steinbach shocked many by condemning Judge Kyle Duncan of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit when he tried to speak at the event. Unable to speak, Duncan asked for an administrator to intervene and Steinbach stepped forward.
Steinbach promptly declared that “I had to write something down because I am so uncomfortable up here. And I don’t say that for sympathy, I just say that I am deeply, deeply uncomfortable.”
She then proceeded to denounce the exercise of free speech itself as stressful and painful for the Stanford community:
Steinbach: I’m also uncomfortable because it is my job to say: You are invited into this space. You are absolutely welcome in this space. In this space where people learn and, again, live. I really do, wholeheartedly welcome you. Because me and many people in this administration do absolutely believe in free speech. We believe that it is necessary. We believe that the way to address speech that feels abhorrent, that feels harmful, that literally denies the humanity of people, that one way to do that is with more speech and not less. And not to shut you down or censor you or censor the student group that invited you here. That is hard. That is uncomfortable. And that is a policy and a principle that I think is worthy of defending, even in this time. Even in this time. And again I still ask: Is the juice worth the squeeze?
Duncan: What does that mean? I don’t understand…
It may be even more difficult for conservative students to understand how Steinbach would help them after she denounced their effort to invite Judge Duncan to speak.
The email is also telling in its reflexive assumption that such conflicts are matters for emotional support. After Steinbach condemned Judge Duncan’s effort to speak as causing untold emotional harm to students, Stanford is now moving to deal with the emotional harm from Steinbach’s words . . . by directing them to Steinbach and others.
While the email is also meant to offer support for all students traumatized by the appearance of a conservative judge on campus, it is the inclusion of conservative students that was most jarring. Conservatives and libertarians generally have not claimed that opposing views are traumatic exposures requiring safe spaces or counseling. What they seek is free speech. However, it may be easier for Stanford to offer counseling than tolerance for a diversity of viewpoints. It could start by holding accountable those who are responsible for “deplatforming” and shouting down speakers. It would also involve adding true diversity of viewpoints on the faculty rather than an ideological echo chamber. Instead, the law school is treating conservatives like trauma victims and offering emotional support for an environment of its own creation.
It is also worth noting that Merino suggests that the best way to deal with this free speech controversy is to curtail free speech. The email suggests that “Student organizations should consider pausing their student organization social media accounts until this news cycle winds down, as the law school and university have done. Try your best not to engage on Twitter or any other social media platform, as issues tend to escalate and trolls are looking for a fight.”
I understand that shutting down social media discussions can protect students from public criticism. However, it would also tend to reduce criticism of the law school from within the community. Any controversy will draw wider commentary and criticism. Is it better to avoid that public debate as a member of this community to avoid the trauma of contradiction? This is an existential debate over an anti-free speech culture at the school. If there is a time to be heard as a student or a group (on either side of this debate), it is now.
One group that did not take the advice are the student leaders of Stanford’s chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. They reportedly commended “every single person” who helped cancel the Duncan event, calling them “Stanford Law School at its best.”
If so, the Merino letter is Stanford Law School at its best parody of itself.
Education is trickle down E coli.
https://stanfordreview.org/fire-tirien-steinbach/
Hmmm. What about the law licenses of the students who helped shout down the judge? Should they be denied admission to the bar?
what about the licenses of the 4 Deans in the room?
Conservatives don’t need or want safe spaces, grief counseling for political attacks, mommy sessions with admin losers or anything other than to be given freedom to speak, opine and carry on with their own political groups and gatherings. It is leftist soy boys and crazy women that scream that they are in danger due to being on campus with a speaker who happens to be a sitting FEDERAL JUDGE. It is libs that have the moronic DEI admin dean worrying about the affect a judge’s speech will have on their little fragile souls.
The right has a guiding theory: Change the damn channel!
One of the tactics used by Adolf Hitler to crush any opposition. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
The Ivy Leagues are the absolute last place we should look for enlightenment in the 21st century. Stop sending your kids there and enjoy their freedom from crippling debt because you didn’t spend your life saving for them to be barraged by propaganda. While you’re at it, raise your kids better before they are college age. Indoctrination relies on a receptive mind devoid of preexisting cognitive ability and values, and you can do this even if you are secular and not lazy or narcissistic. Tired of hearing about this. It is obviously a big, big problem that most are too cowardly to take responsibility for or address. Sometimes doing the right thing is hard, very, very hard, and you might have to put down your phone for a few hours a day and look ‘bad’ to your ‘friends’ or your ‘audience’ (likely composed mostly of bots) and stand on your own. Decide what is more important: saving face, or saving a**. It is a legitimate equation in these tremendously shallow and checked out, brain dead times. It is likely you will still exist in 20 or 30 years; decide right now what kind of world you’d like you and your progeny to live in, and act accordingly, regardless of whatever other people, most of which you don’t even know, may think of you. *That* is courage, and the Professor does this every day.
The ones responding for Stanford are whacko. Read the Free Beacon and the email sent to students.
Professor Turley’s opinion piece is good but doesn’t give enough flavor to the event and aftermath.
Here is part of the email sent out by Jeanne Merino (she/her) Acting Associate Dean of Students
https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FW-Aftermath-of-Thursdays-Events.pdf
https://freebeacon.com/campus/stanford-tells-federalist-society-students-to-reach-out-to-diversity-dean-who-encouraged-disruption-of-their-event-and-to-shut-up-on-twitter/
I read the email you provided, thank you.
And that letter was pathetic. To suggest that THEY should suspend their SM presence? To not discuss what happened? Go talk to some yahoo, rather then going after those students who disrupted the lecture?
Pathetic.
That’s not tone deaf. It is plain stupid.
If words traumatize you then the legal profession is not the place for you.
“Stanford University is advising conservative students [. . .] that they can ‘reach out’ to [. . .] DEI Dean Tirien Steinbach who helped shutdown the event.”
Don’t like being tortured on the rack? Torquemada will hear your complaint.
“‘Try your best not to engage on Twitter or any other social media platform . . .'”
In other words: Help us evade the truth. If you don’t mention the evil, then it doesn’t exist.
Those academics are the most despicable creatures in the culture. They operate on the irrational premise: Our wishes create reality. Our wishes alter reality.
Let me get this right, these students are going to become lawyers? WTF
JPW, not only are they studying to become lawyers, they are also supposed to be getting the “college experience” so that they can become adults and go out into the world. Maybe they will then do what my niece did as a baby when my father would tell her not to do something–cover her eyes and think (pretend) he could not see her anymore. She was about 3–it’s not going to work at 23.
They will become lawyers and judges. By the time they get there things will be bad enough in most of those venues that they will fit right in. How many times have we read (I have) now the ridiculous corrupt rulings and movements of so many courtrooms ?
Anyone who is not involved in those scenes certainly has lost any idea that fairness and justice will occur.
A few minutes ago I just heard about another outrageous case that the left wing judge mishandled.
These deranged corrupt students will be blooming and flowering because the system will be that destroyed by the time they get there.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Stanford President and Law dean make an apology, but now show their true colors in allowing this insensitive response form the team of students. What Stanford has to do in order to rebuild their academic credentials is firing the DEI associate law dean and the dean of students, and then formulate and enforce a clear free speech policy a la Chicago.
Free speech should be a factor in the ranking of universities and law schools.
That has got to be the dumbest thing I have read all week.
I bet the Federalist Society leaders and those who attended to hear the judge speak either LOL or rolled their eyes.
They dont need “support.”
Aside the judge, they were the only adults in the room.
The use of logic or even the law has passed. A blunt trauma is now the only remedy to cure us of what ails us – prog/left ideology.
DIEversity (Diversity [dogma], Inequity, Exclusion) under the Twilight faith, Pro-Choice ethical religion, class-disordered ideologies, Levine’s personal affirmation, political congruence (“=”), and redistributive risk (e.g. SVB). Welcome to the American Spring.
That said, diversity of individuals, minority of one. #HateLoves[Elective]Abortion the wicked solution.
Stanford is just one example of an institution that has fallen from the Left’s Long March. We are seeing a New Cultural Revolution in institutions at every level of our society, driven by brainwashed Maoist running dogs and vigorously promoted by ignorant, compromised mass media.
“Because me and my…believe…” Grief.
As an adult instructing these students, along with her other issues of non-tolerance of those who do not freely agree wholeheartedly with her, her English grammar is very poor. I do not think that she is qualifications include being a mental health care provider or social worker.
I expect conservative and classical civil libertarians on the campus of Stanford do not need whatever emotional support the University has to offer. I suspect it is because the Stanford hierarchy is so accustomed having to soothe the ruffled psyches of illiberal students that it thinks all other students suffer the same.
psychiatric dysphoria
Liberalism is a philosophy of divergence (e.g. generational, sectarian). American conservativism is an encapsulation of classical liberalism, which is a principled subset of liberal philosophy.
If students at elite universities can become “traumatized” and need “safety and mental health” support just from the presence on campus of a federal judge with opposing views, then they are worthless, no good for any law firm. Clearly they’ll crumble at the mere mention of a different opinion. Or are future law firms now expected to employ a legion of mental health workers just to make sure the employees “feel safe”? This charade really has gone too far.
“We’re the Dean’s office of DEI, and we’re here to help you get over the fact that we silenced and marginalized you over your beliefs”!
Not tone deaf, Stanford leadership is doing exactly what it means to do to the FedSoc students, and if they don’t like it they can pound sand.
Professor, where in the quote does Steinbeck condemn free speech? She says the antidote to abhorrent speech is more speech.
When put into the context of everything else she had to say and do, it is quite clear that what little she had to say that was at all positive about free speech was markedly disingenuous.
What is this abhorrent speech you refer to? Who was “literally denied their humanity” and what was the impact on those people? Are they dead? The left doesn’t even have to literally martyr people anymore, they simply make it up. Clowns.
She condemns free speech by acting as if she is the arbiter of what is abhorrent and then by saying that she stands for exactly what she didn’t stand for. How those things slip past you is what…confirmation bias? Stockholm syndrome, Perkins Coie fees, …
PS is there only one bot here trying to play the side of the left?