Academia Anthropology Free-For-All Politics Pronouns Or Else

When Intellectuals Gather

March 13, 2023 by David 88 Comments

To ruminate deeply on the issues of the day:

A crowd of jeering Stanford Law School students shouted down, yelled profanities and sexual mockery (“you can’t find the clit”) at Fifth Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan.

Stanford Law School Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Tirien Steinbach then intervened – not to admonish the students, but to spend several minutes berating the Judge for having the audacity to appear at Stanford Law School, which was traumatic to the students given his conservative judicial decisions.

Among the Judge’s supposedly harmful and traumatising views are his belief that dysmorphic men and autogynephile perverts should not venture into ladies’ toilets and changing rooms, and a refusal to use the preferred pronouns of a transgender sex offender, an enthusiast of pornography featuring children.

Other screamed objections to this “cis-het white man” included the outrage of his being brought “into the classroom building where our students have to go every day to be able to get this degree and participate in this community.” Apparently, mere proximity – even sought-out proximity – to a person with whom they disagree causes students of law, would-be intellectuals, to “feel unsafe.” Demurral, it seems, results in “tearing the fabric of this community.” This, from students and staff who accused the Judge of “wanting an echo chamber.”

This all was performative. None of those protesting students were forced to go into the classroom holding the lecture, and they engaged in a ritual walkout after they had prevented the Judge from giving his prepared remarks.

Video of this performative, self-applauding wankery – by students and Ms Steinbach, a supposedly grown woman – can be found at the link above, with a longer version here.  Of the four university administrators present at the event – acting dean of student affairs Jeanne Merino, associate director of student affairs Holly Parish, student affairs coordinator Megan Brown, and Ms Steinbach – none saw fit to ask that the invited guest be allowed to actually speak.

Stanford, since you ask, is ranked the second most prestigious law school in the United States, with annual tuition a mere $66,000.

Update, via the comments:

An interesting line from Ms Steinbach’s (conveniently prepared) impromptu comments:

“Do you have something so incredibly important to say,” she asked him, that it is worth “the division of these people?”

Apparently, would-be lawyers, at a prestigious law school, are made of tissue paper and must not be exposed to lines of thought, and questions, with which they politically disagree. For instance, objections regarding gay couples adopting children. Or any hint that the prospect of mentally ill men using women’s changing rooms and other private spaces is seen by some – indeed, by many – as both farcical and improper.

It’s perhaps worth noting that it’s not at all clear whether Judge Duncan was planning to touch on any of the legal opinions deemed verboten by the protestors. The ostensible topic of the disrupted event being “Covid, Guns, and Twitter.” It’s entirely possible that the professionally offended simply feel that no-one who has ever displeased them, by holding a different view, on any subject, must ever be allowed to speak in their presence. Even if they have to go to wherever he is.

“You have no right to speak here,” they chanted. “This is our jurisdiction!”

While the students were, shall we say, reluctant to entertain new information, or even to let it be uttered and thus heard by anyone else, they were keen to impart wisdom of their own. And so, we learned that continual interruption, shrieked abuse, and loud feigned retching noises are, for intellectuals in the field of law, “a valid form of communication.”

Update 2:

Another academic, an Associate Professor of Law, weighs in:

You see, by daring to complain about his treatment, the invited speaker is apparently “punching down” at the self-satisfied protestors, and at Stanford’s equally downtrodden Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. A woman whose salary is between $100,000 and $200,000. You know, the one who thinks that law students shouldn’t have to behave like adults, or hear views they disagree with, lest they suffer some emotional collapse or shatter into atoms. A challenge they would surely never face in, say, a court of law.

The same Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion who ended her own self-indulgent sermon, and her pantomime of caring, by encouraging the recreationally indignant to continue their delinquent behaviour:

I look out and I don’t ask ‘what is going on here?’ I look out and I say, ‘I’m glad this is going on here…’

And yet: “The power asymmetry is obvious,” tweets our Associate Professor, entirely without irony. While referring to a scenario in which one man is being pre-emptively shrieked at and barracked by 100 or so Mao-lings, while his requests for civility are ignored by all present, including not one but four members of university staff.

Update 3:

Oh, and if it still isn’t clear what kind of people the protestors and their enablers are, a footnote of sorts. Because reciprocal behaviour is for the little people.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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