I am having a tough week. I was recently compelled to write a column expressing skepticism about the prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey for shell art posted on social media, despite being one of his longest and most vocal critics. Now, I find myself having to write a column in defense of former Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro, who was just dumped as the commencement speaker for Georgetown Law School. I have criticized Schapiro for years as a major force in destroying the intellectual diversity in higher education. The problem with believing in free speech is that you have to believe in free speech even for those whose speech you abhor.The irony in both cases is crushing. Comey, who targeted President Donald Trump in a baseless Russian collusion investigation manufactured by the Clinton campaign, is now complaining about lawfare against him.Schapiro is even less compelling as a victim in a cancel campaign. While Northwestern president, Schapiro pandered to the left and showed little support for free speech on campus. Schapiro denounced what he called “absolute” free speech positions and endorsed speech sanctions, including treating speech as a form of assault.
Under Schapiro, a wide array of speech was deemed “microaggressive” or intolerable in the interests of harmony and inclusion. He did little to quell the viewpoint intolerance at Northwestern and the virtual purging of faculty ranks of conservative or Republican faculty.
Now the mob has come for Schapiro.
He was selected to speak at the law school commencement and immediately triggered an outcry. A Jewish academic, Schapiro is viewed as pro-Israel. He was immediately labeled a “Zionist” and an offensive choice by students and faculty.
A petition called on the administration to remove Schapiro, stating “Schapiro is not a lawyer, has no connection to Georgetown, and holds controversial, Zionist, and harmful opinions.”
Of course, past commencement speakers such as Henry Louis Gates Jr. were also non-lawyers with no connection to Georgetown, but there were no protests. That was just last year.
Every year, commencements remain a virtual lock for liberal and Democratic speakers. After eliminating most conservative faculty members from departments, universities have made commencements the final lessons of ideological indoctrination for students.
This year’s speakers include figures ranging from Nancy Pelosi (Notre Dame de Namur University) to Jamie Raskin (American University and Goucher College) to candidates like James Talarico (Paul Quinn College). There is no subtlety in their selection or their messages. As expected, Pelosi slammed the GOP and Trump while Talarico gave effectively a stump speech on fighting the billionaires.
Schapiro fits within the narrow ideological bandwidth of permissible liberal speakers with one notable complication: he supports Israel.
Accordingly, Schapiro was unceremoniously dumped and replaced with a Georgetown law professor who has opposed investigations into antisemitism on campuses.
For his part, Schapiro wrote campus leaders: “I have presided over 28 commencements as a president and dean, and those ceremonies are about celebrating the graduates and their supporters. I was looking forward to giving a talk about humility and gratitude, but I don’t want my presence to distract from the day’s festivities. I wish the law school graduates the best of luck in the days ahead.”
It was a gracious and mature response to an adolescent and irrational campaign.
It was, regrettably, the product of the very same cringing-concession policies I previously criticized Schapiro for enabling at Northwestern.
During his tenure, the university abandoned academic integrity and control to student mobs. One example that I previously discussed involved a Sociology class taught by Professor Beth Redbird that examined “inequality in American society with an emphasis on race, class and gender.” Redbird invited both an undocumented person and a spokesperson for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It was precisely the type of balanced discussion that we once valued in higher education, exposing students to vastly different views to allow them to consider the underlying social and political realities.
Various student groups organized protests to stop their fellow students from hearing from the ICE representative. They were greatly assisted by the university itself. As protesters screamed “F**k ICE” outside of the hall, the Dean of Students appeared and told these students that they would be allowed into the class if they promised not to disrupt it. The university simply asked them to stop screaming profanities and told Redbird that they promised to sit quietly in her class.
Of course, they immediately stopped the class, the ICE official had to be removed, and Redbird was forced to cancel her class. What was most unnerving was not just the passivity of Northwestern (which took no action against the students) but also the sense of entitlement at the university that prevented others from speaking.
Sophomore April Navarro rejected the notion that faculty should be allowed to invite such speakers to their classrooms for a “good, nice conversation with ICE.” She added, “We’re not interested in having those types of conversations … We’re not engaging in those kinds of things; it legitimizes ICE’s violence, it makes Northwestern complicit in this.”
Now, it is Schapiro himself being canceled.
In Rage and the Republic, I write about how academic and political figures are ignoring history as they pander to radical groups. Democratic leaders like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries believe that they can ride a rage wave back into power. What they ignore is how these revolutions ultimately “devour their own.” Today’s revolutionaries become tomorrow’s reactionaries.
Schapiro is only the latest victim of viewpoint intolerance in higher education. Of course, his detractors can quote Schapiro himself in dismissing objections as reducing free speech to mere “slogans or free speech at all costs.” It appears that he is now one of the prohibitive costs to be avoided in our academic echo chamber.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
This column also ran on Fox.com
…”The irony in both cases is crushing. Comey, who targeted President Donald Trump in a baseless Russian collusion investigation manufactured by the Clinton campaign, is now complaining about lawfare against him.”…
OH COME ON JONATHAN -really-, the whole 9 yards of what Comey, Brennan, Hillary, Obama, … THE LIST, put us through (for years) was not a sordid soup of convoluted conjecture (Lies) in a conspiracy of “Lawfare” against Donald Trump and select (targeted) Associates.
Careful Jon, ‘DON’T DRINK THE COOL-AID’ now.
What comes around, goes around. THE LIST (Comey) has had this coming.
” . . . holds controversial, Zionist, and harmful opinions. ”
OH NO! A controversial opinion expressed in words . . . and we all know that words (and silence) are violence!
Insanity . . .
Right, never let a person speak who has “controversial” opinions. And now believing Israel has a right to exist is “controversial.” These people are certifiably bonkers.
The Left ruins everything it touches. Leftists are mentally-deranged monsters.
And the weak, woke globalist university administrators are no better, morally. They are weak, woke, and a joke. May they go broke. They incentivize evil conduct. America deserves better in its academic institutions.
HEAVEN Forbid ICE uses violence. The gall. The nerve.
Laken Riley
A little over a year after President Donald Trump scolded him during a nationally televised Oval Office meeting, insisting he held “no cards,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is proving he holds a few after all.
Setbacks for Trump ally and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and the world’s newfound appreciation for Ukraine’s drone-focused defense industry have given Zelenskyy a remarkable reversal of fortune and a much stronger position than Trump could have predicted 14 months ago.
In Moscow on Saturday, Putin, who expected to take control of Ukraine within days of his 2022 invasion, will instead oversee a Victory Day parade that is drastically scaled down out of fear of Ukrainian long-range drones and missiles. Russian airports were closed in the preceding days and cell service periodically shut off as security measures. Putin himself has cut back on public appearances over fears of assassination attempts or even a coup.
Russia has held its traditional, full-on May 9 Victory Day parade, marking the World War II defeat of Nazi Germany, in Moscow each of the last four years since Putin’s February 2022 invasion. This year, though, with Ukraine possessing the ability to hit targets even beyond Russia’s capital, Putin has downsized it. The parade will not feature heavy military hardware like tanks or missiles and will have fewer troops.
“They fear drones may buzz over Red Square during the parade,” Zelenskyy said Monday at a conference of European leaders in Armenia. “This is telling. It shows they are not strong now.”
Zelenskyy’s Ukraine, meanwhile, has essentially stopped or even reversed Russia’s advance in the eastern Donbas region with an increasingly lethal drone industry. It is striking deep into Russia to hit military and oil infrastructure, cutting defense production deals and further integrating its economy with Western Europe, selling cheap anti-drone interceptors to Gulf states under attack from Iran — all while Zelenskyy travels easily among European and world capitals to build support for Ukraine’s cause.
Trump lives rent-free in your head. Things can change in a year, but that never occurred to you because your insane need to somehow prove Trump “wrong,” someway somehow, blinds you to reality. You have a very real psychiatric condition called TDS.
As far as I can tell, TDS immunity comes from having a functional brain.
TDS is awesome and entertaining if you’re immune like us.
You must have intended to post this on your own blog, as it has non-responsive to the topic of this blog where you have mistakenly posted it.
@Anonymous
You use lots of words and references to try to sound smart – you aren’t. You never express a personal opinion, and I can only conclude that is because you are incapable of having them. By all means, continue to regurgitate.
If you ever share something that isn’t part of a pre-programmed narrative, we will all stop in our tracks. And non-sequiturs are precisely what they sound like, and convince no one, of anything. I am not certain your conditioned mind can even grasp that concept. Thankfully, most of us do, and we think you are not well. We will vote accordingly.
That you all quite literally scream like babies when that happens tells us all we need to know. Somebody changed your diapers – it wasn’t you, and somebody cared enough to do it, because you are still here. Teen angst in the 30s or beyond is not a good look, and people exhibiting that behavior will never, ever be trusted with anything of any consequence, so by all means: keep creaming into the void. Nobody beyond your parents or grandparents cares.
*Screaming* into the void, but the other probably suffices, too. Get your dopamine or serotonin hits from actually doing for others and forget about your tiny damn self for two seconds. And get off the pipe, it isn’t helping you.
I am having a hard time being sympathetic to Morton Schapiro as he deserves worse. But, He is lucky, the guillotine would have been waiting for his head in earlier times, but who knows. With increased violence and a lack of conservatives to blame his head could be removed from his shoulders in the future.
Classic MAGA moron thinking.
Outrage when right wing extremists are shouted down and “cancelled”, but absolutely no problem with the MAGA mob “cancelling” those on the left.
Complete and utter hypocrisy, but really all that can be expected from ignorant, ill-informed MAGA morons.
What universe do you live in? Morton Schapiro a “right wing extremist”? Are you that dumb? And you provide no examples of “MAGA mob ‘cancelling’ those on the left.” By contrast the professor provides about 100 examples per year of Leftist lunatics cancelling speakers who are moderate, conservative, or even left-wing if they also support Israel. Seriously, what universe do you live in? I’m genuinely curious.
Names us someone who has been cancelled by MAGA.
” Schapiro pandered to the left and showed little support for free speech on campus. “
Schapiro supported leftist ideas. None of us on the right want him cancelled, but the actions are being taken by the left, not the right. As I said, “But, He is lucky, the guillotine would have been waiting for his head in earlier times” by the left.
The fools we have to deal with
OT, the VA Supreme Court agrees with the circuit court that the new map is unconstitutional. The ruling is based on VA law, not federal law, and so there is no appeal to Scotus. This is the final word.
NotSoOld: Thanks for that update, don’t want to start OT thread, but I note that good ole NPR had its own way of dealing with the VA news, warning of a trend that will fire up its online readers:
“…Then, after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened voting rights for minority communities last week,….”
Lin – yeah, the MSM is playing the “weakened voting rights” canard. Minorities can vote just as easily after the Scotus decision as before, and they vote for the candidate they deem the best, not the candidate whose skin color matches their own, NPR’s bigoted assumption to the contrary notwithstanding:
https://x.com/toddstarnes/status/2052599394864603470
1. I fully support the NPR cadre’s right to speak
2. I wish I wasn’t paying for their blatant, ignorant, racist, sexist bigotry with my tax dollars.
“When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination”- Thomas Sowell
Who the —- is Tom Sowell, and why doesn’t he simply state what preferential treatment is—corruption as a crime—something like this:
“Preferential treatment is an egregious violation of moral, biblical, fundamental, and statutory law, constituting total corruption.”
Now there’s some brilliance on display without the superfluous melodrama queen demonstration affected to obtain validation.
Ignorance n display.
So Morton Schapiro was canceled for the same reason Josh Shapiro was an unacceptable VP candidate for the Dems. I see a pattern here.
@oldmanfromkansas – be careful playing the race card. Those familiar with that process will tell you the key decision factors on who should be in the chain of succession for and as a puppet figurehead of power to succeed Biden realized actions related to Joseph Hoeffel, Kathleen Kane, and in general the Fast Eddy Philadelphia political power structure funded through the “Civic Community Associations” made him more vulnerable than even Walz if exposed (and that information is widely available). Race had nothing to do with it.
I don’t play the race canard. I was implying support for Israel was the deciding factor with Shapiro, as it is with cancelling Schapiro. The Hamas wing of the Democrat party – which now controls that party – will not stand for anyone who supports Israel, as Professor Turley’s article demonstrates quite clearly.
For any of you still wondering just how the German people allowed the Nazis to do what they did, just watch the national news and you will understand.
The Radical Right used to have a place in the academy as well. I’m thinking of Illinois language professor Revilo P. Oliver, a man barred from the pages of National Review, and later expelled from the John Birch Society he had helped found. The Board of Trustees once voted whether to fire him but decided to let him stayǰ
Nationas Review and the John Birch Society are not GeorgeTown Law school
Nor are they the academy, Nor are they institutions receiving public funding.
Nor is support for Israel an extreme position.
College’s and universities can make their own choice’s regarding hiring and firing when they do not receive public funding.
In what world is it that Students get to decide how and who teaches Law ?
All these students are accomplishing is devaluing a Georgetown Law Degree.
Dear Mr. Turley, Mr. Comey photographing “shell art”???? I hope you are kidding. Mr. Comey knew just what it was referring to: the possible assassination of President Trump. It’s no wonder the left keeps on with greater and greater displays of hatred. Numbskulls like Comey are given a pass in the press. Hopefully, he will be convicted of making a threat towards the President. It may take a generation or longer to correct the ships of the various Universities. It is going to take a generation of young people who want to hear both sides of an issue before making a decision on what is right.
It is my understanding that this case rests on significantly more than the social media shell post.
If that is all there is – while Comey should be excoriated, the case must be dismissed.
“8647” does not meet the standard set in Brandenburg V Ohio.
With respect to Comey’s intent – I agree Comey knew what he was doing and what he was saying.
But we do not criminalize what is in peoples heads.
It was absolutely Wrong for those on the Left to go after Trump for his far less offensive J6 remarks
or for going after meme artists for joking that people could vote by Text.
Or any of the rest of the lawfare against the right.
Absolutely we should go after those on the left for their ACTUAL criminal conduct.
Absolutely “turn about is fair play”.
But unlike Democrats we should NOT be going after people for our guesses as to what is in their heads. We should not be going after people for fake crimes. We should not be prosecuting noinsense that 90% of people do not recognize as a criminal act.
Isn’t it 18USC 781 or thereabouts as threats to a president, VP and further on judges etc. Yes, 90% of people don’t know it and they should.
A commenter brought to light volenti non injuria and the aggressor doctrine 90% don’t know either. How is the common person competent to sit on juries without some understanding of actual laws. Kagan ignoring the VRA ,section 2 (b) in her recent dissent makes no sense, JS.
The common person is woefully ignorant of laws.
I have no use for Mr. Comey, but there is nothing illegal about Comey’s shell photo. In the first place, the term 86 is ambiguous. In my career in the hospitality industry I had several occasions to request security to 86 a patron, which meant to remove him from the premises. I was not asking security to kill the malefactor. But, let’s assume for argument’s sake (something that flourishes here 🙂 ) that Comey was wishing the president dead. Expressing a wish that someone was dead is NOT actionable.
I agree (does not appear illegal), and I wish that instead of media headlines of “investigations” and “indictments” against Comey (setting the stage for massive headline coverage when those investigations and indictments backfire), I believe James ComeR, DOJ, et al., could have gained so much more ground by simply building -not a legal case,- but a public sentiment case–sequentially outlining ComeY’s sly, slimy, efforts to taint the Trump administration, starting with feeding some information to his media buddy (name escapes me), knowing the attention it would get, and his (what-I-see-as-subliminal) efforts to influence public sentiment . Likewise, the case against his daughter is going the same way….
Let America decide what it wants, but let’s see both sides here.
Soon Professor it will be you canceled for having pro-Constitutional views………
For those who did not read my comment yesterday, I noted this from https://www.cspicenter.com/p/diverse-and-divided-a-political-demography
“Liberal arts colleges are the least politically diverse. Many have almost no conservatives, and thus very low viewpoint diversity. But they have high sexual diversity, at nearly 40 percent LGBT.”
“Ivy League schools average 10-15 percent conservative and 60-75 percent liberal. Across 150 leading schools, there are nearly 2.5 liberals for every conservative.”
“Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 55-23 margin on campus, and liberals outnumber conservatives 53-21. Elite students are thus two-thirds more Democratic and twice as liberal as the American population.”
__________________________________________
AS the imbalance continues to grow, we are reminded that some (SOME) of those same students are now the PARENTS who start fights at school athletic games —or during school board meetings or public assemblies, or throw water bottles and sandwiches at police and security personnel, and either engage in–or encourage- the vandalism we see at large political protests. Some of our worst offenders are in the age group of 25-50, including the two NY attorneys (in their mid-30s) who threw the molotov cocktails during George Floyd protests, https://www.courthousenews.com/new-plea-deal-for-protesting-lawyers-who-threw-molotov-cocktail-at-nypd-van/
Lin,
There is a bit of good news in all of that.
Progressives birth rate is only 1.6. Conservatives is at 2.4. The replacement rate is 2.1. So, leftist illiberals are literally non-breeding themselves out of existence.
There also appears to be a connection with women who have either blue or green dyed hair and or have a septum nose ring are less likely to marry or have children.
Upstate: Well, that is an interesting statistic. (And although I have a few gay friends, if these liberal colleges have the “high sexual diversity, at nearly 40 percent LGBT” that the ^citation finds, I would suspect that most of reproduction will occur in the non-LGBT 60% sector.) Also, I suspect that many with green or blue hair and nose rings already belong to alternative communities: is it a sign of rebellion or one of feeling the need for attention? I dunno.
p.s. sorry you’re getting some brrrrrrr… weather this week, hope it doesn’t hurt crops or animal feed.
Thank you Lin!
Stocking rate is still to low to put the livestock out. We had a frost warning the other morning. Still a few weeks away from our last frost date.
@Upstate @lin
Indeed, we appear to be experiencing ‘Idiocracy’ in reverse. This is good news.
Lin – while there is reason for any institution to consider its viewpoint diversity – particularly teaching institutions, the key issue is not the makeup of the institutions – but the absolute intolerance of the left. That is true EVERYWHERE, but nowhere more than the academy.
Yesterday we had students trapping a university president for allowing actual political debate.
Because the left academy is not going to punish misconduct by left wing nut students – as we also saw yesterday at Berkeley, and because universities typically have their own police forces and real police and prosecutors tend to leave them to themselves – these students will not see consequences until they leave the academy.
These are the same students who in the outside world are using cars to ram police officers who are enforcing laws they do not like, or otehrwise engaging in the same misconduct that was approved of in college.
This is bad for those students, and bad for the country.
Various forms of left wing protests are slowly fizzling. The early no-kings protest had few show up outside of major cities – even paying protesters is not getting enough.
Quietly those commuting crimes at protests are being arrested and they are getting significant prison sentences.
Put simply students are leaving academia and discovering the world does not tolerate their conduct.
I think that is true – not just at the fringes – with those who illegally detain university presidents graduating to find that showing a police office will land them in prison.
But it is also true of the less radical. In 2013 employers get hit with a wave of Woke new employees and could not figure out how to deal with them.
Increasingly Employers are making it clear to employees – your job is to make money.
That is what makes the world a better place for everyone.
If your ideology does not sell movies or beer or motorcycles or tractors or newspapers – then it is a liability.
I also think there is a growing intolerance for the left handling of crime.
Returning to academia – a college education has the value that the workplace gives it.
Or put differently – free markets work, but sometimes it takes time.
Colleges have declining student bodies due to demographics.
But the value people are placing on a college education is diminishing.
We have seen decades of emphasis on College degrees with the result that skilled blue colar jobs are now frequently commanding near or even over 6 figure salaries.
You can go to harvard leave with a degree in underwater basket weaving and 200,000 in debt with poor job prospects – maybe manage a McDonalds if your lucky.
Or you can skip college – get paid to learn how to weld and end up making as much as 250K/yr with no debt as a skilled welder.
I am not looking to give carreer advice – each of us should make the choices that make us happy.
But I am seeing no evidence that going woke leads to happiness or success and a great deal of evidence that avoiding the work world leads to both happiness and success.
John Say: thanks for bringing up examples I forgot about.
And while you see a “growing trend” of resistance to Leftist tactics, I am reminded of the new fairy tale being taught by the Drag Queen to our kindergarteners, that begins with “Once upon a time, when progressives and the Left represented the minority ideology in America, they now have become the statistical majority…”
The abject cowardice of administrators and faculty in dealing with student mobs remind me of The Twilight Zone episode called “It’s a Good Life”, where a small town lives in fear of a boy who has magical powers to turn people into scarecrows if they displease him in some way. I assumed it was fiction.
It’s stunning how the left evades, entirely ignores, the consequences of their own beliefs. Communists always purge. The Russian, Cambodian, Cuban, communists all did it. There’s a current purge of senior leaders by the communist Chinese. The left in America, the Democrats, are now fully communist and as every communist movement, they purge, attack and destroy their own people who are not sufficiently vicious and tyrannical to satisfy the comrades leading the mob.
Tiresome as it may seem, the reminder is always as follows: Do not send to known who was elected. Rather send to know who voted. Therein lies the rub. Local, state, and federal representatives do not arrive at their stations by default. There is an electorate which sends them there. That which ensues from the hallowed halls of government is merely a reflection of the mandate which the elected deem has been given them. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…”
Just listened to Dr. Chloe Carmichael talk about her new book, “Can I say that?” 37% of Americans in a recent poll stated they ended relationships over politics. 66% of Dems reported THEY initiated it while only 27% of Republicans did. Most striking was her pointing out that when discussion ends, the potential for violence increases. We’ve certainly seen a lot of that and it is getting worse.
I don’t disagree with the sentiment in this piece. Unfortunately, collectively the modern left does not possess that level of generosity, clearly. They very actively and vocally espouse its opposite.
Not only does it not possess a level of basic generosity, it does not display the very human desire to seek knowledge by knowing both or all sides of an issue.
@Susan
Very much agreed. I think the inability to make informed decisions is a feature, not a bug, too.
That is why it is important that those of us who favor free and open debate must resist the temptation to respond to the left as it responds to us. We need to be consistent in our support of speech we find obnoxious in order to show that we are not like them.
“Schapiro himself being canceled.” (JT)
Hate to see more examples of that barbaric trend. Glad it is happening to him.
The word “barbaric” is well chosen. One of its meanings is a lack of understanding of the mores and manners of society. The people who seek to throttle the expressions of ideas in a university setting are barbarians as judged by our best traditions.
Sam:
Is this an example of:
(a) reap what you sow?
(b) Karma?
(c) what goes around, comes around?
(d) goose and gander?
(e) all of the above?
(f) non of the above?
(g) (a) and (b) but not (d)?
(h) (d) and (c) but not (a) and (b)
ha ha, do you remember those days?
(meaning, taking-the-tests days)
I prefer essay exams. That way I can play the downtrodden card and get bonus points.
I thought commencement speakers had reached a limit when the University of San Francisco invited Dr. Fauxi to speak,last year. The man whose gain of function research on bat viruses, carried out at an inadequate biosafety level at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funded by the American people via the EcoHealth Alliance, killed millions and cost trillions.
Imagine a Jesuit school inviting Pol Pot or Stalin to speak at graduation
The worm is indeed becoming very tired of being constantly turned. Shiver me timbers mate. In the California debate four of the environmentalists politicians running for Governor stated that they are in favor of the building of new oil refineries in California. The monitor of the debate should have followed up with another question. Does this mean that you are now in favor of “Drill baby drill” in California? Rest assured, if one of the Democratic contenders should be in the runoff he or she will have the full support of a large percentage of the Jewish vote in California. The worm is turned and in painful response it cries out against global warming but when turned excruciatingly to its other side it protests in favor of “Drill baby drill.”
The Democratic politicians in California always score the highest on the state drivers license test because they can turn on a dime and give you nine cents change. Does deserve what you get come to mind??
Northwestern University once was a staunch defender of free speech, namely when associate EECS professor Arthur Butz publshed “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, ” a book appearing to prove, with mathematical precision, how the Holocaust could not have happened.
So long as Butz dod not discuss this thesis in class, all was well, though periodically the campus socialist group would invade his classroom to protest.
There were periodic calls to fire Butz, but Northwestern stood by the principle of academic freedom. Butz had tenure, and what he thought and wrote in his spare time was not going to affect that.